


The wrong place, the wrong time

by asparagusmama



Series: Oxford and the Doctor [2]
Category: Doctor Who (1963), Lewis (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Slash, Wolfblood Robert Lewis, and a little bit from Judge Dredd, elements I've borrowed from CBBC's Wolfblood, plus a little alpha/omega dynamics if you want to read it that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-02 01:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4040356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagusmama/pseuds/asparagusmama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive in Oxford in the autumn of 2008. Meanwhile Lewis tries to persuade Hathaway that burrito is a healthy meal choice. Both discover the body of a man. Many suspects have motive and/or opportunity? But is his murder as straightforward as it seems...? And will the Doctor and Jamie be able to give the two awkward men so obviously in love a nudge in the right direction...?</p><p>Set between seasons 2 and 3 of Lewis and probably quite soon before The War Games for the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was twilight in a cobbled street junction over shadowed by many medieval buildings, but ending with a concrete monstrosity probably built in the nineteen sixties. It was early evening; and there was a chill nip in the air in the early autumn weather. A group of late tourists wandered past the turn and towards the bright lights of the main High Street. A man with a long black gown hurried by, wondering at it, as the wind picked up. The air was suddenly ripped apart by the weirdest of sounds, like a sort of wheezing, groaning noise. What kind of description is that, wondered the Fellow and he hurried on by, to his rooms, ready to enjoy another peaceful night before that rabble of students descended in another few weeks and Michaelmas began.

*

Julie sighed and gathered up her notes, glad that this was the last week of the TEFL job. Two weeks in the Greek sunshine beckoned before she was back to admin work with the new students up at Merton. She shivered. It was unseasonably cold for September; she really didn’t fancy the long cycle home to Hinksey.

 

*

Dave huffed against the cold as he took a short cut though the meadow. He was going to be late again. The manager of The Bear had warned him if he were late again he’d be sacked, and he really needed this extra pub job, the cash came in handy since Louise could no longer work. When they’d planned to start a family they had never dreamed she would end up on crutches and have to give up work months before the baby, too early for maternity pay.

 

*

A group of schoolgirls in blue tartan skirts and blue blazers with red ties stumbled out of The Mission Burrito, giggling, stomachs fit to bursting with cheap burritos. One almost stumbled over a woman’s’ purple wheelchair and her daughter, in a maroon blazer, rolled her eyes and sighed. Why couldn’t people look where they were going? The girl stuttered an apology, even though her shin throbbed with the bruise, and ran after her friends, towards the Bear and Oriel Square.

*

The man scowled and shrugged his jacket around him, then cupping his hands around the match, struck it and lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply and stumbled, more than a little drunk, down Dead Man’s Walk. It was surely safe by now? Why was he afraid, anyway, scummy hippies had no right to take what wasn’t theirs!

*

“What do you think then?” Lewis asked, mouthful around his burrito.

“M’mm,” said Hathaway non-commitally. He prodded his burrito still wrapped in his foil.

“Fast. Cheap. Yet healthy. My neighbour raves about this place all the time.”

“H’m,” replied Hathaway, and looked up to see a schoolgirl in plaits and a maroon blazer staring at him. He grew uncomfortable under her unblinking gaze.

“Don’t stare,” hissed her mother, a scruffily dressed, harassed looking woman in a wheelchair.

“He’s wearing make-up,” the girl said, with the kind of embarrassing loud certainly normally reserved for toddlers.

Lewis snorted happily and sniggered, before reaching out for Hathaway’s burrito. “If you’re starving yourself, sergeant, I’ll eat it.”

“No,” Hathaway put a protective hand over his food, “I just would have liked some coffee.”

*

Linked arm in arm the four girls wandered down Dead Man’s Walk, making spooky noises and giggling, startling a nervous looking man.

“Hi Dave,” said one of them, “how’s Lou?”

“Oh, um Katy is it? Trevor’s kid? Yeah, she’s doing okay, as long as she takes it easy.”

“Oh, give her my love, won’t you.”

“Sure. Um, I’m late for work..”

“Bye then.”

“Um yeah, bye.” The girls’ shrieking laughter followed him. He had to give himself a little pep talk that they weren’t laughing at him.

That was weird. Art installation? He’d thought it was one of those portaloos as he approached Merton but it was bigger, a darker blue, and wooden. He hurried around the object and on to work.

*

Five minutes before Dave had rushed past the strange object its door had opened and out had stepped a bright eyed, ridiculously dressed, man. His trousers were too short, his jacket, a frock coat, too big, his bow tie pinned on by a safety pin, his mop hair cut 40 years out of date. A much younger man in a kilt and a tight t-shirt and black jacket, who put a protective hand on the older, scruffier, man’s shoulder, followed him. The two men turned to the open door, which bizarrely spilled an awful lot of bright light out of it, and beckoned to a dark haired young woman dressed in a silver cat suit with a matching Alice band. They both held out a hand and she stepped out and looked around.

“Why, I do believe we’re in Oxford,” she said, sounding delighted, looking about as the older man locked the door of his strange box. “But when?”

“Aye, when Doctor? From what you’ve said, we could be in my time, two hundred years before that or four hundred years after.”

“Or more,” added the girl.

“Well, judging from the pollution content, we have to be at least mid twentieth century, and certainly after 1967,” he said, nodding his head towards the monstrous concrete block of Merton’s Warden’s quarters.

The girl looked ahead. “My century,” she said definitively, “but earlier. Look at that primitive MP3s those girls have.”

The man called the Doctor peered up the gloomy lane at the gaggle of schoolgirls.

“What sharp eyes you have Zoe,” he said. Zoe preened as if paid a compliment.

*

Ten minutes later, just as he reached The Bear, Dave turned on his heel, picking up the screams of distressed girls in the meadow far behind him, not the amused shrieking of earlier, but the terrified screams of distressed children.

*

Hathaway, too, heard the screaming, having left the Mission to have a cigarette, having given up his burrito to his boss and ordered a salad box to go instead. He popped his head around the restaurant door to inform Lewis before running towards the source of the screaming in long, leggy, strides. With a wistful glance to his second burrito and a quick wipe of his mouth with a serviette, Lewis followed his sergeant.

He caught up with Hathaway at the entrance to Dead Man’s Walk. A man was retching violently, doubled up. Hathaway had a gentle hand on the man’s back. Just then Lewis’ phone rang.

“Lewis.” He listened, as he was told that a young woman, in fact no more than a girl, had rung in to report a murder in the Merton entrance to Christchurch Meadow. Since his current car location was parked in Oriel Square – did he know that was illegal? – could he check it wasn’t a hoax, as there appeared to be other shrieking girls in the background. Lewis informed them he was almost there and walked up the dark lane, passing an obsolete Police Box. What the hell was that antique doing there? 

At the other end of the lane, just before the kissing gates, he met the four girls who had been in the Mission as he and Hathaway had arrived. They were not screaming now, although two were sobbing, one shaking, and the last, as white as a sheet.

“Are you girls alright?” he asked. They shrank away. He produced his warrant card. “Detective Inspector Lewis,” he said.

“Wow, that was quick. We only just called,” said the white faced but composed young lady.

“Coincidence, I was just in the Mission Burrito. So were you.”

“That’s observant, I didn’t notice you.”

“It’s my job to notice things. Besides, you all only had eyes for my sergeant.”

The girls, despite their shock, dissolved into giggles.

“Sir?”

“Hathaway! Don’t go creeping up on people like that!”

“Sorry Sir. The retching man’s name is Dave Manners, works in The Bear Friday and Saturday, and Cowley Works the rest of the week, as an accountant. He’s also a lay vicar,” he added, with some weird disapproval in his voice. “He heard the girls scream, knows one of the girls’ dad apparently. Says they found a body. He went to investigate and well, his supper came up at the sight.”

“We didn’t see the body as such, just the blood. And then men, standing over.”

“What’s this?” Hathaway demanded as Lewis was already pushing through the kissing gates, pulling a torch from his pocket. Hathaway asked the girls and man to stay where they were and pulled out his phone, calling for backup, SOCOs, and a pathologist. He came up behind Lewis in time to see a dark haired man caught in the glare of the torch. His eyes glinted with some feverish look. He looked as if he’d dressed at a jumble sale in the dark. Even tramps never looked so uncoordinated and scruffy. He stood up to his not too impressive height, straightening his pinned on bow tie.

“Ah,” he said, as he realised that his hands were bloodied and had now stained his tie and shirt. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Och, Doctor, why does this always happen to us?”

Hathaway saw a second man squatting at the foot of the body. He too stood up to his equally unimpressive height and Hathaway was surprised to see he was much younger and wearing a kilt, a rather short kilt showing rather lovely legs.

“You found the body then?” asked Lewis.

“Um, yes, as you can see,” said the older, nameless, man. He was wiping his hands on a red spotted handkerchief he’d pulled from his breast pocket.

“We just found him – there,” added the younger man, pointing to the hedge.

“You moved him?” Hathaway asked. The two men looked up at him.

“My, but aren’t you a tall young man. Isn’t he tall, Jamie?”

“Aye, he is that. And as skinny as a wee bit a string.”

“Could you answer the question please?”

“He was breathing, I was trying to save him. His throat has been ripped – not a clean cut, a rip.”

“Are you a doctor?” asked Lewis.

“I’m the Doctor, actually. And this is my friend Jamie. And the young lady who... oh? Where did Zoe go?”

“Zoe?” Lewis asked, feeling the entire conversation was getting out of his control. Just then Hathaway spoke behind him,

“Sir, uniform have arrived.”

“Yes, go sort them James.”

Hobson arrived soon after uniform, and the scene of crime moved in, although the murder scene had been somewhat like Piccadilly Circus, what with barmen accountant vicars, school girls, to say nothing of unaccountable, nameless tramps covered in blood and their kilt wearing companions. Lewis and Hathaway left uniform to take statements and pathology and forensics to do their thing and arrested the Doctor and Jamie.


	2. Chapter 2

Lewis sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Right, let’s start at the beginning again, shall we? What is your name?”

“I’ve told you. The Doctor.”

“So you keep saying. Doctor what? It’s a bloody title, not a name.”

“It’s the only one I have to offer you.”

“Okay. You and your friend...”

“Now, he has a name you’ll like, James Robert McCrimmon. And you like the name James, don’t you Inspector. And of course, Robert is your own given name.”

“What!”

“I have explained, several times. I was trying to save his life. Why would I kill him? I’ve only just arrived here in Oxford. I didn’t know him.”

“I don’t know! Self defence? What were you and your friend doing, going for a walk in a dark meadow?”

“I don’t like the way you say friend Inspector.”

“Well, what would you call him?”

“Jamie is indeed my friend and I call him Jamie, unsurprisingly enough. And we had literally arrived. We were exploring. Not uncommon in a tourist city, surely?”

“Friend friend or boyfriend?”

The Doctor smiled a smug smile. “What is it with you humans of this era, always trying to categorise peoples’ relationships. Married. Civil partnership. Living together. Separated. Single...”

“What? What are you on about?”

“Never mind Inspector.”

Just then there was a knock at the door and a young Asian woman in uniform entered, looking more than a little confused. She whispered in the Inspector’s ear and then left. The Doctor watched the exchange with bright, curious eyes. He watched Lewis’ strangely fair eyebrows disappear into his hairline and turn to look at him in a nervous fashion. After the young constable left Lewis sat back down, handing the piece of paper to the surely, older DC who had been keeping a silent vigil in the corner of the room. He took it from his boss, read it and swore under his breath, and stared intently at the Doctor. Lewis made a gesture at him with his hands; the Doctor presumed he was being told not to react.

“Okay,” Lewis said after a deep breath. “James Robert McCrimmon is not on any computer record for anything. No national insurance or NHS. Nothing.”

“Not surprisingly, he was born in the eighteenth century. No doubt the DNA sample you took from me has bounced back from the lab in a surprising hurry. Perhaps they thought it was someone fooling around?”

“Sort off. Not human, yeah...” Lewis shook his head and visibly pulled himself together. “Um. Not human,” he repeated more firmly. “Care to explain that?”

“Well,” the man called the Doctor twisted his hands together, looking oddly bashful, “I would have thought that was self-explanatory. My DNA shows I’m not human because I am not. Human. I was born on another world, another time, Inspector. I travel. In time. And space.”

“With your eighteenth century toy boy?” Lewis spat out archly.

“Really Inspector, that is uncalled for. What a horrid expression. And somewhat hypocritical considering all those thoughts you have for your sergeant, I would have thought. Jamie and I are close, very close, but that is surely our business?”

“Aye,” Lewis agreed, rubbing his eyes. He looked up and sighed, running his fingers through his thinning hair. “But you were still found with the body with blood on your hands.”

“I was trying to save his life Inspector, I have already explained that on several occasions!”

Lewis sighed again and leaned back in his chair, glancing at Hooper who stood by the door. Hooper shrugged. “Alright. Fine,” he said. “You convince me that you had nothing to do with the murder and I’ll let you go. I’m not sure I’m meant to, I’m sure there are people I should inform... Ah, hell. Right. Start from the beginning. You say you were trying to save his life. How exactly did you and your friend find this dying man?”

“Well, it’s a bit difficult to explain. We arrived in my time machine. Shall we call it that? I call it the TARDIS.”

“TARDIS?” Lewis interrupted; as if he were hearing something he once had heard of, long ago.

“Yes. TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension in Space. Mean anything to you, Inspector?”

A long ago soft voice tickled Lewis’ memory – ‘Please, say nothing to him when you meet a long time from now, when you an old inspector’. It had been whispered into the young DC Lewis’ ear so long ago... he shook his head to clear the memory and replied, “Nothing at all. Go on.”

“Well, we had just stepped outside and were debating whether we were indeed in Oxford and – I take it this is Oxford?”

“Um. Yes.”

“And when...” the Doctor paused and looked at Lewis expectantly.

“It’s the 10th of September 2008,” Lewis supplied helpfully.

“Ah. Zoe was right then. Zoe! Has anyone yet found my other friend?”

“You have a girlfriend as well?”

“A friend Inspector. Zoe. Young woman, dressed in silver, dark hair?”

Lewis looked at Hooper.

“I’ll go see if we know anything boss... Sir!”

 

*

Meanwhile, Zoe was lost in the darkness of Christchurch meadow. She had almost slipped down an embankment into a river – the Cherwell or Isis she did not know, for she was as blind as a bat. The streetlights she could see to her right were a very long way off, and the spot lit colleges looked eerie and misty behind her, looking as if they might be over a mile away.

She wished she had worn something with pockets, or had carried a bag, something to have a torch. Why didn’t she think of these things? Give her an equation or a chemical solution she was happy, but the practicalities she was not too good at. Nor was the Doctor, she suspected. They relied on Jamie far too much really for all that.

She did so hope the Doctor and Jamie had been able to save that man. She hoped too they had heard her, but she had long realised they hadn’t, as Jamie would most definitely have come after her.

She had chased the man, the thing!, into the growing darkness down the rest of Deadman’s Walk and out into the open meadow and down towards the Cherwell, but had lost him. She had heard a splash and thought he might have jumped into the river, but she wasn’t sure, he might have thrown something in to confuse her. It wasn’t a very big splash, not the sort that such a big fiend might make. He had been very fast, she was far behind him by the time she had heard the splash. That was the first time she had nearly slipped. But that was hours ago, and the sky had turned from the deep purple-blue of twilight to the deepest black of night a long time ago. It was a full moon, but a very cloudy night, full of heavy clouds, and the moon was only occasionally barely visible through the thick coverage. To cap it all it began to rain, huge, wet, droplets, drenching her in seconds. She might have well have fallen into the river, either of them!

Shivering and muttering under her breath about how she would give Jamie what-for for not following her to give chase of the culprit, she hugged herself tightly and turned back towards the eerily lit colleges of Christchurch, Merton and New, hoping not to meet anything on the way and that she would be able to find a way out. She supposed in absence of a better plan, she should find the TARDIS and wait. If only she had a key!

 

*

 

James Hathaway had received a copy of the same report from the same young woman PC. He did not quite know how to react. For a while, he held on to it in one hand, glancing at the report as if it might bite him, while he actually bit the side of his thumb continually on his other hand, leaning back and sideways onto the arm of his chair, staring at James McCrimmon across the desk.

Eventually Jamie could take the silence and the staring no longer.

“What does that wee bit of paper say then? It had better say something the like we no did anything but tried to help that poor man!”

“It says you are on no data base. The assumption would normally be that you have given a false name, and had never had your fingerprints or DNA taken by us. Giving a false ID is a criminal offence.”

Jamie frowned, trying to follow. Fingerprints he could guess at, and the Doctor had told him once the marking on the tips of everyone’s fingers was unique to them in all of time and space, an amazing thing that was a beautiful as stars and nebulae. But as for all the gobbledygook the tall pretty man spouted... “Data what? My DN what? I am who I say I am. James Robert McCrimmon, Piper to the Clan McLaren. If you need to know this I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1724.”

Hathaway stood up and threw the paper down on the table. “Ridiculous! That would make you over 300 years old! You barely look 30!”

“That’s coz I’m not! I’m no that old!” he looked up at the sergeant, who looked angry and confused. Jamie had seen this reaction before, many times, so he said more calmly, “And I’m 24, or thereabouts. Travelling with the Doctor can make ye lose track of time.”

Hathaway stared back at him, disbelieving, Jamie supposed.

Jamie picked up the discarded report and struggled to make some sense of it. He could read fluently now, but so much of it was a list of numbers and such like, graphs and things too. Zoe and the Doctor’s thing. He did figure out all the numbers, swiggles and charts were saying that the Doctor’s blood was not remotely human before the sergeant snatched it away from him.

“I travel with the Doctor. In time and space. We can go anywhere. Well, in theory. We actually go where the TARDIS lands, the Doctor can’t control it, she had a mind all of her own, the contrary beastie. We’d just materialised in that wee, dark, lane and were arguing – well, the Doctor and Zoe were arguing whether we were in Oxford in the early twenty-first century...”

“You are,” Hathaway said, sitting down again, looking close to tears of confusion. The Bible said nothing about time travel.

“Where is Zoe anyway?” Jamie suddenly demanded.

 

*

Zoe was cold, wet, and miserable. Oxford did not appear to have changed – or will not change – in the next sixty years or so. The shops were different, mostly, of course, but she recognised some chains that would obviously survive the future troubles ahead. 

It had taken her over an hour to get out of Christchurch Meadow, she had had to climb over a high fence, carefully avoiding spikes, and stumbled her way down the dark and spooky Rose Lane next to the closed Botanic Garden. She had headed up the High, thinking she could find her way back to the TARDIS, which she reasoned, must be behind Merton. Merton was where she had attended two summer camp courses in advanced computing and quantum physics in her early teens as part of her Elite Programming. Merton was on of the few colleges to subscribe to the theory – most of Oxford and all of Cambridge has objected to such fast hot housing. It had, in fact, been, a few months of the most freedom in her entire childhood. She had always maintained a fondness for Oxford.

However, she was not feeling particularly fond now. She was soaking wet and bedraggled and the many tourists out and about, looking for a restaurant to eat in, gave her a wide berth. She was shocked, too, by the number of rough sleepers she saw in shop doorways and the arches leading to the Covered Market. She was horrified to think that these tourists thought she too might be a beggar or a tramp.

She located Magpie Lane, which took her to Merton Street and she hoped to go on to Deadman’s Lane and the TARDIS, but the approach was roped off with bright yellow tape emblazoned with ‘police’, and several police cars with their bright yellow and blue battenburg colouring. The police aircars of her time still had the same colouring in Central City. 

She hurriedly stepped back, not wishing to draw attention to herself. Down the lane, beyond the TARDIS, she could see a white tent had been erected over the site of where she, the Doctor and Jamie had found the dying man. She turned back the way she came, not having a clue what to do or how to find the Doctor or Jamie. She had no money or credit, nowhere to go, and no one to turn to. She felt so alone. Perhaps she should go back, talk to the police, tell them what she had seen, that she had chased the murderer or attacker at the very least, but the police security and forensics tent made her think it likely he had died. They might even know where the Doctor was – he was probably helping them solve it by now, if she knew him.

Unless they had arrested him? That happened a lot too.

Oh dear. What to do...


	3. Chapter 3

Lewis popped his head around the office door about an hour after Hathaway had assumed he had left,

“Come on then, if you must work all night, let’s do it at mine.”

“How did you know I’d still be here Sir, much less that I intended to stay?”

“Because I know you, soft lad, and I’m a not too bad detective myself.” Lewis looked at all the witness statements and transcripts of the interviews with family and friends of the victim that the DCs and Plods had collated. “Bring all that. We can pick up a curry and a few bottles of beer on the way to mine. Might as well be comfortable going through it all.”

“Sir,” Hathaway replied, standing and taking his jacket off the back of his chair, following Lewis out with the sheaves of paper hurriedly stuffed in a couple of document wallets.

 

*

 

Jamie was pacing angrily, looking for weaknesses in the cell he was locked in. It was as tight as a drum, and if he escaped, the door led to a corridor with another locked door behind that and then some guards. On top of that he had spotted no less than six of those eye things on the wall, the type that guards would watch at from a distance. He had never seen so many before, it surprised him that such future fellow humans would use intrusive technology. But he’d learn long ago that humans could be as bad as Daleks, or maybe long before he knew that, at Culloden, before he had ever met the Daleks or Cybermen and the like. The English, anyway, and he was definitely in the heart of England right now.

He sighed heavily and sat down on the wee bunk bed. In was no bad as cells went, it was warm and dry, with bedding on the bunk and a flushable toilet in the corner, no bucket or nothing primitive or demeaning. He had long ago learnt to appreciate any technology that was clean, hygienic and comfortable. He had no desire to ever return to the eighteenth century’s living standards. 

An hour since he had been brought supper, and it had been edible, meat in a sauce, mash and green peas. He had not even considered rushing the guard who brought it. Everything was far too secure and tight. He guessed he would just have to rely on the Doctor to get them out of this one.

 

*

 

“Right then,” Lewis said, switching off the television and reaching for the folders, feeling replete. He looked up at Hathaway, who was just returning from his boss’ kitchen after clearing the remains of their curry and beers away, bring a pot of tea. “Let’s have a look then. What had you made of it so far, you always look for patterns?”

“A strange sound and a sudden wind that blew up and disappeared in a hurry about fifteen minutes or so before the schoolgirls found the body. Several sighting of him before that.”

“Okay. But first, with all that weird stuff with the Doctor – what the hell is that supposed to mean, it’s not a name! And this boy, Jamie! I’ve not had time for procedure.”

“And is there procedure for people who turn up with alien DNA or claiming to be born in the eighteenth century?” asked Hathaway archly.

“Aye. As it happens, there is. Innocent has filed a report to some covert quasi-military group, part of the UN I think. She should get a reply in the morning about what we’re to do. And you logged it didn’t you, on the system, like I asked?”

Hathaway looked slightly sick and uncomfortable, but nodded.

“But enough of that,” Lewis said hurriedly, appreciating that maybe his devout and strict Catholic sergeant wasn’t comfortable with aliens or time travel. He wasn’t sure he was, either, not really, but he hoped he was open minded enough to accept the forensic evidence he’d been given. “Tell us about our victim.”

“Alan Marsh. 32. Former hod carrier and labourer. Officially unemployed. Record for petty theft, affray and possession. Believed to be in the employ of a loan shark and slum landlord, so Peterson tells me. Was last seen in Merton Street about twenty to thirty minutes before his body was found. He was actually known by several of the witnesses to his movements prior to his death. PM tomorrow morning first thing, but according to Dr. Hobson’s initial examination, the throat appears to have been ripped open by something resembling a claw or huge teeth – she thinks possibly a gardening implement, but she’ll have more details after her PM. SOCO found nothing at the scene, no weapon, no footprints except those of perhaps a large dog -”

“Could a dog have done it? You know, a dangerous dog, popular weapon with certain types of low life thug. If he’s being watched by Peterson’s team...?”

“Footprints too big for a pitbull of something similar. Like an Alsatian but far bigger, according to the report.”

“Like the bloody Hound of the Baskervilles, you mean?”

“Let’s not speculate Sir. Shall we go through the witness statement now Sir?” Lewis heard the please, even though Hathaway didn’t say it.

 

*

 

Meanwhile the Doctor sat cross-legged on the floor, playing his recorder, which miraculously he had been allowed to keep, even though they had taken his shoelaces and bow tie. Unfortunately they had taken his sonic screwdriver, they had no idea what it was, of course, but believed he could do damage to himself or an officer with it, obviously. It had been rather amusing really, to watch the custody sergeant’s eyes widen at the ever increasingly surprise she struggled vainly to hide. His pockets held so much. Come to think of it, everything else had been taken and put in three large lidded plastic boxes. His recorder had been in his boot, and by that time he suspected the young custody sergeant had had enough and when he argued that music kept him calm she gave in without a fuss. He wasn’t sure what else it was good for, could a recorder be a sonic tool too? No, it would interfere with the harmonies. He hoped at least Jamie could hear him play and feel a bit calmer. If he hadn’t intervened Jamie would have hit one of the officers, the tall, thin sergeant, the young brown skinned policemen or the fat, old custody officer. Not the custody sergeant, of course, Jamie was an old fashioned boy with romantic feelings of chivalry and old-fashioned ideas in his heart. He did not approve of women in such roles, although he politely kept it to himself, the Doctor knew. Just like he knew Jamie still missed poor little Victoria and struggled to understand bright young Zoe.

The Doctor realised his cheerful ditty had turned quite melancholy. He put down the recorder and sighed. He and Jamie were innocent, that murder was unearthly, even evil, and he had great faith in early twenty-first century British police procedure and its forensic and evidence approach coupled with Habeas Corpus, so had no doubt not only would he and Jamie be soon released, but also had no doubt that Inspector Lewis would ask for his help. Touched by artron energy, that one, but he had no intention of finding out more. He had a feeling the man lay in his future, not his past. He was sure had been to this police station once before, however, but couldn’t remember. Well, when one was over four hundred and fifty, the mind was bound to delete things...

 

*

 

Inspector Lewis had no such ideas of unearthly or evil murder in his head, well; none more than any murder was evil and foul. But Robbie Lewis had seen many forms of murder, and the best way to go was to look for motive, means and opportunity – monsters did not form part of that equation. He was currently sat in the centre of his sofa, legs spread, very much the alpha male taking up all the space, unconcerned that his long legged, young, sergeant was squashed up to one side of him. Well, unconcerned yes, unaware, no, he felt the heat of that strong thigh pressing into his all the while his sergeant went through the witness and contacts of the victims, filing details away for future examination.

Anton Milyutin, a Russian sociology Professor and Fellow of Keble had rooms in Merton Street and had seen Alan about half an hour before his body had been found, walking along Merton Street from the Warden Lodge’s end, staggering, very much the worse for wear with drink. Soon after they passed Milyutin reported hearing a strange sound, like an electronic herd of trumpeting elephants and felt a sudden strong gust of stormy wind, but both the blowing and the noise had died down within seconds. He had turned back and seen Marsh turn down the lane to enter the Meadow by the side of Merton College. DC Mercer had noted that the professor had let it slip that he had recognised and knew Marsh but had then tried to deny it. She had pressed but could get no more information out of him.

“It might mean nothing, but...” Hathaway concluded.

“Aye. Why would a young college Fellow, a foreign one, know a local labourer and maybe thug, eh? What secrets does this Professor Milytin... Milutin...?”

“Milyutin Sir.”

“Yeah, him. What does he hide? Where would he go to meet him? The Oxford Castle Inn maybe? The Jolly Farmers?”

Hathaway shrugged almost imperceptibly after a barely there scowl marred his face for a few moments, “It’s nothing to hide, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” Lewis said pointedly. He sighed and rubbed his face. “Okay, we need to speak to him, uncover how he knows him, whether he had a motive. Has Merton Street been searched for a murder weapon?”

“SOCO have closed off the meadow and the surrounding streets to the Dead Man Walk entrances, but they are waiting for first light for a full search Sir.”

“Of course they are. Right, who’s next?”

“Er. Yes.” Hathaway fumbled through his notes on the coffee table, leaning forward, brushing against Lewis’ thigh perhaps more than he needed. The Doctor’s cryptic comment came back to Lewis for a moment. He sighed and pulled his legs together, breaking the warm contact. The lad was so young, and who knew what his preferences were, if indeed he had any at all, he claimed to be celibate. He suspected a gay devout Catholic was more likely to be celibate that a straight one, but what did he know? Right now that acceptance of Catholic teaching seemed to be making him uncomfortable with the Doctor’s blood work and DNA (Innocent had insisted on full bloods after the DNA swab came back ‘not even remotely human’!).

“Julie Teale,” Hathaway continued after consulting his notes. “Currently on a temporary contract with Merton’s summer English courses, but also has a part-time job as their library secretary. She also apparently assists with Freshers’ week admin and seems to have several very part time roles within the college admin. She failed to go down from Merton herself, apparently having a baby in her final year...”

“Couldn’t she go back?”

Hathaway gave his boss a look.

“Aye, well this is Oxford I suppose, not Newcastle Poly. Go on then.”

“She corroborates Milyutin’s sightings and times of Marsh, as well as also describes hearing a, and I quote...” Hathaway’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “... an ‘electronic wheezing and groaning sort of noise’ at the same time a sudden gust of wind nearly made her lose the paperwork she had been carrying from the college...”

“You know, this noise and wind is giving the Doctor his alibi – it’s no doubt his time machine arriving. We saw it.”

“What?”

“That old 1950s police box. It’s his, what did he call it...? TARDIS.”

“Sir,” Hathaway said flatly, his face inscrutable. “I know he’s locked up, it’s procedure, but do we have anything on him, whereas...”

“Whereas what sergeant?” Lewis snapped. The paperwork on an alien being the murderer must be awful; he began to think, although he wasn’t sure, although he had been caught literally red-handed. But where was the weapon then? The man – for want of a better word! – had had his copious pockets searched, and although the young Scot had a dirk in his boot, there was not a scrap of blood, even under ultraviolet. Clean as a whistle, the pair of them.

So caught up in his wonderings about the alien and his eighteenth century toy boy Lewis almost missed something important, something that was a proper police matter.

“Julie Teale is Alan Marsh’s ex. In fact, he is the father of her child, a three-year-old boy. She’s, quote, ‘getting over him, rebuilding her life, doesn’t need this shit, although is not sorry he’s dead. Why can’t he stop ruining her life!’”

“Interesting. She said she saw him enter Christchurch Meadow?”

“She pulled back into Merton’s doorway, he didn’t see her, and if he did he would have made quite a scene, according to her. DC Hooper chased down a string of complains regarding domestic violence from three years back. He was arrested and detained a few times, cautioned and released. She has a restraining order and moved addresses, denies him access of the child for whom he pays no maintenance.”

“Anyone new in her life?”

“She says not. Hooper got the impression she was afraid to, that she wouldn’t feel safe, that he would find her somehow.”

“A motive then, maybe?”

“Plus opportunity and no alibi. Milyutin didn’t see her, or any of our other witnesses.”

“We’ll bring her in for questioning in the morning. We’ll get Julie to do it, she’ll more likely feel comfortable with a woman, giving her past experience.”

Hathaway made a note, leaning forward again to the coffee table. Lewis didn’t mean to but found himself glancing at his sergeant’s trim backside as he did so.

 

*

DC Stephanie Andrews loved nights. It made childcare easier. Her husband came home from work, they had tea, she bathed the kids and put them to bed and then came to work in a quiet, shut up station, dealing with actions and data entry the rest of the team, with their other, more ‘real’ policing actions, didn’t have time to do. Tonight, while she inputted all the path. and forensics report of the murder in Deadman’s Walk – a death in Deadman’s, it amused her! – she noticed something strange flashing for attention on the HOLMES 2 entry for the case, named Indigo – weirder that is than the injuries she was already double entering, and they were strange. Some sort of gardening implement, no doubt, she supposed. Not real claws and teeth, it couldn’t be, could it...?

There was a tag for eyes of Chief Superintendent rank and above only, just inputted somewhere else, responding to the data on the suspect currently in the holding cells downstairs. She wondered whether she should bother the Chief? Innocent wouldn’t be best pleased, to be awoken at gone midnight, she supposed...

 

*

Lewis yawned and stretched, lifting his arms high, not noticing his sergeant had to duck his head and lean slightly to his left to avoid being smacked in the side of his head.

“Look at the time? Is there much more? We don’t get paid for all these hours, maybe we should call it a day?”

Hathaway was yawning too; Lewis’ yawns were always infectious. “There’s only one more witness statement to go Sir. The schoolgirls will be statemented in the morning, with an appropriate adult with them. The best thing was to get their parents to fetch them and get them home with the number of Victims Support. Traumatic for them, finding the body...”

“Yeah. I suppose. Poor kids. I had my head full of the Doctor and the blood, I forgot about them. About fourteen weren’t they? Poor lasses.”

“DC Mercer looked after them until their families could be traced and arrive. Merton’s Porter was good enough to let them wait in his lodge.”

“Nice of him. Tea?”

“Um. Yeah. That would be nice Sir.”

Lewis stood and headed for the kitchenette, turning to look at his lanky sergeant, who had definite dark smudges about the eyes and had so over-reacted in a very Hathaway under-reacted, hidden, but deep down terrified way, to having an alien in custody. “Tell you what lad, you look shattered. I’ll get the spare quilt and a pillow and you can crash on my sofa.”

“Thank you Sir, but...” Before Hathaway could think of an excuse to go home to his own flat and not sleep Lewis interrupted with, 

“It’s an order. You need to sleep and I know you. Come and tell me about this last witness while I make us some tea.”

Hathaway arranged himself elegantly against the breakfast bar, looking for all the world like a model for GQ in his smart suit, with his slightly loosened tie and his blond short hair, and went through the document cases until he found the right paperwork.

“Reverend David Manners – or Rev David - call me Dave - Manners as Hooper has written here. An unstipended Anglican minister, an accountant at the BMW plant and also works part time at The Bear...”

“Wait a minute. He’s a vicar?”

“Yes. Unstipended means unsalaried, he supports the parish priest, is fully ordained, but also works within the community.”

“Is this a religious thing, like those Friars, or a money saving thing on the side of the C of E?”

“Bit of both Sir. He is struggling financially too, hence the second job. His wife is pregnant and too ill to work, he told Hooper,” Hathaway replied, scanning the detailed notes of the Statement Hooper had taken. Really, these should have been typed up and entered in the PNC and HOLMES 2 already, and then he wouldn’t have had to deal with the spidery writing of Hooper. Still, they were all on overtime right from the actual murder. Tomorrow – today! – would do.

“Okay. I remember him. He threw up after seeing the body.”

“Yes. He had passed the girls on his way to work, nearly got there but turned around when he heard them scream. We arrived virtually at the same time. I heard the girls scream too, remember?”

“Aye. You’d gone out for a fag.”

“He saw the victim about twenty minutes before he saw the girls, walking the opposite way, towards the Isis and Cherwell, he had come across from Abingdon Road on the river path. He saw no one else alone, but also saw a group of Chinese tourists and another of language school students with clipboards, writing down words like ‘tree’ and ‘leaf’. He stopped to talk to three, allowed them to practice their English.”

“And that’s why he’s a priest and we’re not, he has patience with those hordes of language school kiddies,” Robbie said with heavy irony.

Hathaway gave him a glare, “I do not remember intolerance to young language school children with matching backpacks being discussed when I left the Seminary Sir.”

“What was then?” It was out of Lewis’ mouth before he could stop himself. He’d temporarily forgotten his sergeant’s history even as he was worrying about his beliefs compromising this case.

“Not. That.” Hathaway looked down, scanning Hooper’s scrawl for anything else pertinent and important.

Lewis touched Hathaway briefly on the arm before placing his mug of tea on the counter next to the files. “Ah, let’s call it a day bonny lad. We’re tired. The fact that he saw our victim going in the opposite direction is interesting; it means he turned back, for some reason. He was seen in Merton Street ten minutes before – he should have passed the girls, we’ll find out in the morning. Wonder what he was up to, where he was going. Have we found a relative to ID him yet?”

Hathaway shook his head while he picked up his mug and took a sip of tea, still looking intently at Hooper’s notes. He scowled,

“This is odd Sir. Reverend Manners reports hearing a low growl, like a large dog, just before he passed Marsh, and again, maybe in the bushes alone the Cherwell, but as he then heard a very strange noise – presumably the Doctor’s vehicle,” Hathaway finished with difficulty.

Lewis couldn’t help himself, he found his hand between Hathaway’s shoulder blades before he thought about it, rubbing gently, “The Hound of Christchurch, eh? Or the Beast of the Cherwell?” he huffed a gentle laugh. “I know what Hobson said about the injuries, but really...”

“And the Doctor,” Hathaway added quietly, looking into his boss’ eyes.

Hell! Catholics believed in demons and that. Werewolves too, no doubt. And, in fact, hell...

He suppressed a shudder. Ripped, torn and bitten, both the Doctor and Hobson had said about Marsh’s throat.


	4. Chapter 4

The cell door was flung open first thing by an angry looking Inspector Lewis.

“You’re free to go,” he snapped.

The Doctor, still cross-legged upon the floor, stood and smiled.

“Thank you Inspector Lewis. I take it my friend is also to be released?”

“Yes. And we’ve found your other friend; Zoe Heriot is it? Another one not on our records, although she informed one of my constables she is yet to be born. He found the lass shivering in a shop doorway being hassled by a mentally ill, drunken, homeless lad and brought her in to dry off. She actually claims to have seen the murderer and is going to talk to us in a while. You can wait if you want, and maybe...” Lewis looked at his shoes, looking like a much younger man. The Doctor thought he was probably quite remarkably good looking as a younger man. And more cheerful. Some great sorrow hung about this man’s shoulders, he decided, and did not deserve a teasing.

“Perhaps there are one or two points you might like me to help with Inspector, one or two matters not covered by regular police procedure?”

Lewis looked up again and rubbed in eye and then back of his neck before he sighed, “Aye,” he breathed out. “If you would...”

Lewis hadn’t liked to ask but he had been summoned at eight that morning by Chief Superintendent Innocent to be informed that they had received a memo from UNIT, that semi official, mostly secret organisation that police officers liked to pretend didn’t exist unless they were forced otherwise. Not only had Innocent received instructions to immediately release the Doctor and his companion, but to ask for his assistance if the murder in anyway did not seem the normal type, if any evidence, however small, pointed to something unearthly, unexplained, or ‘magical’ – the exact word used, magical! Innocent had not been happy, he was not happy, Hathaway had looked positively sick when he told him, but Hooper seemed quite cheerful about it, damn him. He was currently in the canteen with the young Miss Heriot, she who was apparently about minus fifty years old!

Hooper himself had not been able to sleep that night either. The Doctor’s DNA and blood work was just too exciting, the idea of time travel amazing. It was as if parts of his brain long since put to sleep when he was a small boy were being awakened. The thing he found most confusing was the fact that the boss and the sarge were normally the most kind, gentle, and compassionate of officers, something hard to maintain in a Serious Crime Unit, but both seemed to keep their humanity intact to a greater degree than others he had worked for. Why then were neither of them focusing on the fact that the Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon were both concerned for their young friend, a young woman barely out of her teens, wandering around a strange town, possibly in a strange time or even on a strange planet. It wasn’t right.

So he had got out of bed, got dressed, and driven about the city centre, and it hadn’t taken him long to spot the trouble. True, it could have been a bit of argy between two rough sleepers, in which case it really was down to Uniform, but nevertheless, he had got out of his car and walked up the tailors on the corner of St Edmund’s and the High and found a very young woman dressed in an expensive silver catsuit sitting huddled up in the stop doorway step being shouted at by one of the more well known homeless schizophrenics; the Mushroom Jesus as he called himself.

At first young Zoe had seemed equally afraid of him, but once he showed her his warrant card and asked if she were a friend of the Doctor’s she relaxed immediately. Not wanting to take her to the station and have her locked up after her ordeal, he took her home where Mrs Hooper fussed over her, fed her, and gave her a shower, dry clothes to sleep in while her own were dried, a warm bed and hot chocolate. His wife did miss their daughter Molly; that was certain.

It proved to be a good move, as at breakfast, young Zoe had told him of seeing a wild looking man, more beast really, bend over the injured man, sort of gnawing at his throat and growling. She had screamed in horror and the Doctor and Jamie had come running, but she had given chase, thinking Jamie would come too while the Doctor tried to save the poor victim, but he obviously hadn’t. She had been horrified to hear that the Doctor and Jamie had been accused and arrested as the poor man’s attackers and was more than happy to give a statement immediately.

Of course, once he heard, the boss wanted to interview her himself. He would. DCs just shifted through all the shit and the DI took all the interesting actions, and the credit of course, it was forever thus!

 

*

Lewis and Hathaway stood at the scene of crime, staring at the SOCO team’s markers, pointing out splashes of blood, footprints and paw prints – and they were indeed the size of some enormous hound, or perhaps even a wolf, but it would have to be the size of an adult man, they both reasoned but did not say out aloud to one another, although a shared, worried, look, communicated enough between the two men anyway.

Lewis sighed, “Ah, enough of this. We should focus on procedure and not get carried away by all this nonsense,” he said, not noticing the three strange travellers re-emerge from their ‘TARDIS’.

“And what nonsense do you mean Inspector?”

Lewis and Hathaway turned and looked down on the strange man. He had put on a clean shirt and bow tie, yet again pinned on by a safety pin. Jamie had discarded his black tee shirt and jacket that had also been blood stained, for an old-fashioned looking shirt with ties instead of buttons. Over this he wore a sheepskin jerkin. He stood behind the Doctor, and slightly to the right of him, a protective guard, man at arms, lover. Lewis noticed the dirk back in the boot, and almost decided to point out it was illegal to carry such arms here and now, but gave it up as a bad job.

“Animals. Monsters. Throats ripped. Let’s work on what we have. Evidence. Forensics and witnesses. Your Zoe saw a man.”

“Well, at first I thought it might have been a big dog, or a wolf, in the twilight,” Zoe said, coming out of the TARDIS and closing the door carefully as she spoke. She had too changed, and was wearing a very short tunic dress in pink and green panels over green tights. She had a shoulder bag too, in pink leather, which matched her knee high pink boots.

“A man, you said,” Lewis said pointedly.

“He looked at me, when I screamed, his face seemed all furry and at first I thought he had a snout and large ears, like a dog, but as he got up and ran it seemed more like an unkempt beard and long hair. He did snarl at me and then he ran.”

“Naked, you said,” Hathaway prompted.

Zoe nodded.

“Show me which way he ran,” asked Hathaway.

Zoe looked to the Doctor, who nodded and smiled. “Show the sergeant, Zoe. Then you can get off, if you would still like to.” The Doctor looked up at the tall Hathaway. “I said Zoe might go to the Bodlian for the day, and study. Perhaps the Museum of Science or the Ashmolean? You won’t need her after this?”

“She’s given her statement. What sort of academic study interests you Miss Heriot?” Hathaway asked as the two of them walked off down the lane, Zoe leading the way. The Doctor, Jamie and Lewis watched them follow the route Zoe had chased the murderer.

While she did so and Hathaway contacted uniform to section of the area and SOCO to make a further forensic search once they had finished in Merton Street and Deadman’s Lane, Lewis and the Doctor looked more at the scene where Marsh had died, the Doctor again explaining how he had found him, the state of his injuries. As they discussed this Jamie said quietly, in the background,

“It wasn’t a full moon last night, was it?”

The Doctor turned. “Inspector Lewis is right, Jamie, we must proceed scientifically. We can’t rule out lycanthropy, and despite common myths, a full moon is not always required, depending on the type of lycanthropy we are dealing with. There may well be a normal motive and murder here, as the good Inspector and his tall sergeant wish for. Perhaps there was a murderer and a dog, a dog trained to kill...”

“I’ve dealt with dogs used as a murder weapon before,” Lewis added. He did not, however, confirm that it had indeed been a full moon, or close to it, the night before.

“Or a mad person, living wild. Zoe said he was unkempt, dirty and naked. Or she thinks he was. Considering she chased him for nearly an hour she is not very sure, is she? And that in itself is mystifying.” The Doctor turned to Lewis, “Zoe comes from a time when the bright and the best of children are taken away and their intelligence trained. She is highly observant and has an almost photographic memory...”

“Aye, I know the type,” Lewis butted in, looking fondly towards where his sergeant and Zoe were. Zoe was pointing towards the Cherwell.

“And also she has limited imagination, which might explain why she was so confused by what she saw.”

“You mean she saw a werewolf and it doesn’t fit in her view of the universe or the like?” Jamie asked sharply. The Doctor gave him an annoyed look and sighed,

“I’m not sure it’s very helpful to use words like that Jamie,” he said, with a glance to Inspector Lewis, who had squatted down to get a better look at the paw prints.

“But you do sense evil Doctor, don’t you?”

The Doctor glanced again at Lewis to check he wasn’t looking and nodded slowly, and then said hurriedly, “Not evil exactly Jamie, but something is very wrong, a rip in time, I can feel it, as well as confusion, desperation, and violence. If we don’t find the source very quickly all of Oxford might be in danger.”

 

*

 

Lewis quickly took control again, insisting that the Doctor was with him as a specialist consultant, but nevertheless, they would proceed as modern police procedure dictated until evidence that simply couldn’t be handled by normal Thames Valley CID SCU actions. But he kept the Doctor where he could see him, along side for all interviews. Jamie came with the Doctor, of course, and Hathaway followed his inspector like a loyal puppy dog, as Jamie pointed out to the Doctor,

“The skinny lad has got it bad for his boss, hasn’t he Doctor?”

“We shouldn’t gossip Jamie, but yes, the poor boy is head over heels in love isn’t he? Shame Inspector Lewis doesn’t notice.”

“Shall we give them a wee push then?”

“Jamie! It’s not our place to interfere!”

“Seems to me you do nothing but interfere Doctor.”

“Not in matters of love. But if you might drop a hint or two Jamie, well, what can I do?” The Doctor turned and gave Jamie his most impish smile, the one that could turn Jamie’s insides to water. He smiled back,

“Aye, if you say so...”

 

*

 

Professor Anton Milyutin was nervous to have the police back again, especially such senior officers.

“It’s nothing to worry about Professor,” Lewis reassured. “It’s just one or two points that need going over again, plus a couple of new questions.”

“And it takes four of you?” Milyutin asked, staring at the four men on his doorstep, an attractive tall man in a smart suit was something to be expected, the inspector’s sergeant no doubt, and unexpected welcome eye candy on top. But the older man with the strange, dated, heavy fringed hair dressed as a tramp or a clown along with the very attractive younger man wearing a kilt, now that was very odd. It confused him so much he didn’t know what he was feeling.

“This is the Doctor and his assistant Mr McCrimmon. They’re from UNIT, consulting Thames Valley Police on this case.”

Anton shuddered. He wondered if they might be there to do with the strange noise he had heard. He had heard of UNIT in Russia, they had dealt with the strange crash on his uncle’s farm when he had been a boy.

“Come in. Would you like some tea? Or something stronger?”

Milyutin’s rooms were in half of a cottage at the bottom end of Merton Street, the cottage was painted pink and Georgian, quite new for the street. It had been clumsily split in half, giving a tiny living room and kitchenette, with a tacked on bathroom extension built sometime in the nineteen sixties extending into the garden. The narrowest of staircase’s led to his study and bedroom. Anton pointed up the stairs, explaining the living room was really too tiny for the five of them. He went into the kitchen. Hathaway followed to offer help, and, of course, size him up.

While they waited for the kettle to boil Anton fiddled, looking nervously out of the tiny window that looked down the side of the bathroom into the teeniest of gardens.

“Is it about the strange noise?” he blurted out.

“I can’t really tell you,” Hathaway said, “but we do know about the noise.”

“Do you think I should make English tea?”

“How about both?” Hathaway said, eyeing a rather splendid samovar. “I drink my tea black sometimes, and I’d love to try Russian tea. But as for my boss,” he shrugged slightly and his lips twitched the barest of smiles for the smallest moment of time. But his pale eyes were quite warm for a moment. Anton had to look up to the sergeant, which was rare for him, as at six one, he was used to people around him looking up. Especially considering most of his students were young women!

“Fine. I’ve heard of UNIT you know,” Anton said as he made tea. “The ones in Russia.”

“Then you’re ahead of me,” Hathaway said acerbically. “I only heard about then three hours ago.”

“Why are they here?”

“Did you know the victim?”

Anton sighed and pulled up the only stool at the tiny breakfast bar and sat. “Yes.”

“How?”

“I met him at Baby Love.”

“Baby Love, the disco at The Castle Tavern?”

Anton sighed again. He supposed a policeman might know where he meant straight away; then again, Hathaway was very well groomed, wearing even foundation and mascara. He nodded, commenting mildly, “Disco is a rather old fashioned way of describing it Sergeant,” before deciding on the truth and admitting, “I was very drunk, I’d had a bad time with my second thesis... My research takes me often into the dark underbelly of society and I was depressed.”

“You slept with him?”

Anton nodded. “It was a mistake. He is – was – bisexual, with a string of girlfriends and children, and can be quite violent. He has a temper. But that wasn’t my regret.”

“What then?”

“He works outside the law, have you found that out?”

Hathaway shook his head, no point confirming anything, this way they could get more information, “I think my inspector should hear this,” he said in said, picking up the tray of samovar, teapot, tea glasses, cups, saucers, milk and sugar.

 

*

 

As they all sat on the eclectic mix of chairs set out for tutorials in his office, Milyutin explained all he knew about Marsh. He worked sometimes for a man called Initiaz Gulum, a successful businessman with fingers in many pies, both legitimate and illegitimate. He was a building contractor, student and slum landlord throughout East and South Oxford, and also had massage parlours and strip clubs.

“Not exactly your devout Muslim then,” Lewis said sarcastically. Hathaway rolled his eyes at him. 

“What exactly did Mr Marsh do for Mr Gulum?” the Doctor, who had up to this point been silent, alternatively drinking from his tea glass and his cup of tea, as he had been unable to chose which type of tea, asked quietly.

“Well, I think he started as a builder on one of his sites out on Greater Leys, but soon he was... sorry, I don’t know the English? But doing the threats, the violence, evicting tenants illegally so the flats could be redone for a higher market, keeping his girls – by that I mean, prostitutes – in line.”

Lewis nodded. He has already begun to suspect as much. “An enforcer.”

“Enforcer?” repeated Anton, seemingly delighted.

“Heavy. Thug. There are many professor,” the Doctor said happily. “English is such a vivid, vibrant language. But might I ask, since you knew him, how did he seem, when you saw him before he was killed.”

“He was drunk, but that was nothing new. He seemed a little afraid, I think, but I have never seen him afraid before, so I am not sure. And angry. He barged past me, didn’t acknowledge me, so I assumed he was busy, something work related, he never wanted anyone to know he had boyfriends as well as girlfriends...” Anton looked away, realising he had confessed to more than a one night stand with a man he knew to be unfaithful and cruel. It did not paint him in a good light.

“Afraid and angry, you say,” the Doctor asked as Lewis demanded,

“What hold did Marsh have on you Anton?”

Anton looked at the Doctor not Lewis and nodded, taking a little strength in the sympathy in the warm brown eyes of the strangely dressed man before saying, without looking at the inspector, “He was blackmailing me. I funded myself thorough college for my first degree through porn movies. He found out.”

“Porn!” exploded Lewis as Jamie asked,

“What’s that?” while the Doctor reached across and tapped his knee gently, saying kindly,

“Thank you for your honesty Professor Milyutin.”

While, at the same time, Hathaway’s phone rang. As he went down the stairs to answer it he heard Anton exclaim,

“Not for money. For sex! And although I loathed the man, I did not want him dead! What kind of man do you think I am?”

 

*

 

Hooper was on the phone to the sarge. He had guessed he had interrupted the interviewing of a witness. He doodled as he listened to Hathaway excuse himself and left the other people, including the boss, presumably.

“What have you got for us then?" the sarge demanded. Hooper dropped his pen. His nibs was not in a good mood.

“Good intel from that vicar bloke, sarge. Thing is, he won’t tell me much on the phone. He seems very scared, though, and the more we’re digging on the victim, the more of a bastard con he seems, as for his boss, this Gulum...”

Hathaway listened to all the confirmation and extra information on the body with a growing sense of relief. This was going to be an ordinary, messy, crime gang related killing after all, straightforward and unremarkable, probably a trained dog, no doubt an illegal, prohibited dangerous dog, maltreated, half starved and vicious. It would have to be destroyed, of course. Poor thing, it was just a weapon. The girl was no doubt terrified and confused by all she saw. Transformations from wolf to naked man indeed!


	5. Chapter 5

As the four men left Merton Street to walk back to Lewis’ car, parked in Oriel Square, Lewis’ phone rang. He tossed his keys to Hathaway as he answered,

“Lewis.”

After the call was over, he informed Hathaway, the Doctor, and Jamie, that it had been Dr. Hobson on the phone and she required his presence immediately. The post-mortem had thrown up as many questions as it had answers, and she wanted to show him something.

“Might I come with you, Inspector?” the Doctor asked, wringing his hands and looking up at him.

Lewis looked for a moment that he might refuse, but he obviously remembered the UNIT brief that morning, and nodded curtly, “Sure. Why not? You might make more head or tail of this than Laura. James, you go on and interview this vicar, Manners.”

Hathaway nodded, “Of course Sir.”

“What about me Doctor?”

“Ah, Jamie, I think you should go with the tall sergeant. You might be of use.” The Doctor then came up to Jamie, seemingly to just pat him on the arm a goodbye, but he whispered quickly, he face twisting with urgency, “And keep an ear out for you know what Jamie. The good sergeant will be looking for motive of human activity, so you must listen for anything else.”

“Werewolves or shape shifters, aye,” Jamie muttered quietly, matter of fact.

“Anything else,” the Doctor stressed, “open mind is the key to detecting, as it is to learning anything, don’t close your mind in the opposite direction to the sergeant. Work together, please. We still might be wrong. I hope we are.”

“Oh. Aye. If you say so.”

While the Doctor and Jamie had been talking, the Doctor had also watched the almost wordless conversation between Lewis and Hathaway. Lewis had held out his hand and Hathaway had returned his keys, his head nodding in the direction of the car. Lewis and closed his hand over his keys, fingers brushing Hathaway’s palm, to which Hathaway responded to with a dilation of his pupils and a quickening of his pulse not detectable to mere humans.

“I’ll pick up my car at the station,” he then said, and Lewis had responded in a teasing tone,

“Not far with those long legs, is it?”

Hathaway responded with a grimace and glance to Jamie.

“Jamie can move very fast indeed when he needs,” the Doctor couldn’t resist butting in.

“Aye. What?”

Hathaway tried and failed to hide his annoyance, “Come on then Mr McCrimmon, let’s get back to the station for my car.”

 

*

 

The Doctor seemed ridiculously pleased to be sitting in the front of Lewis’ car, he even asked to drive, to which Lewis gave an abrupt negative answer. He beamed at the colleges and commented on the bridge and the Cherwell before talking about the South Parks and Headington Hill before the Great War. Brookes University was a delight and a surprise to him, as was the size and the modernity of the John Radcliffe Hospitals Campus. Despite his discomfort with it all, Lewis began to try to work out when the Doctor had visited in the past and future too, as the Doctor also seemed to find a couple of colleges missing close to Greyhound and Angel meadows.

They met Hobson in her main office; she was grabbing a bite to eat. Lewis apologised for their intrusion.

“Yes, you have apologies to make, but not for my unfinished sandwich,” Hobson said, standing quickly and wiping her mouth with a tissue. She glanced wistfully at her lunch before glaring angrily at the Inspector. The Doctor could sense some deep frustration and confusion coming from the pathologist. “I tried to catch you at the station, but I have three RTs coming down any second so needed to be back here. Besides, come with me.” She then seemed to notice the Doctor. “Sorry? Are you the consultant Hathaway emailed me about this morning?”

“This is the Doctor, Laura, he’s here as an advisor, due to the size of the teeth marks and the dog saliva...”

“Wolf,” Hobson interrupted him. “And something else.” She glared at him again. 

The Doctor smiled a hello and tried to hold out his hand to diffuse the situation, but the Inspector’s hackles were now rising. The tension between these two was as loud as it was between the sergeant and his boss, expect it was one sided, Lewis deflecting this attraction through embarrassment, rather the guilt and mutual attraction that there seemed to be for his sergeant. Having thought that, he still would give it evens which way the inspector would finally go, given the man’s age, gender, and background and the time he was in – silly, stupid, homophobia, more pronounced in the nineteenth and twentieth in some ways that it was in Jamie’s century. Dear Jamie, he wondered how he was getting on with the sergeant. And of course, there was the almost-wolf DNA, the something else would be marks on human DNA and the lycanthropy trigger genes... was that Brie in the pathologist’s sandwich. He was hungry... Oh my, they were angry at each other!

“Laura, what have I done?” snapped Lewis.

“Done! Done? Lewis! How could you? After all your years in CID!”

“Laura, what the hell...?”

Ah. There was a rip, and it wasn’t a straightforward time rip. He had thought as much. Very occasionally, he wished he might be wrong. He hoped the sideways rip had closed itself, for he hadn’t a clue how to fix it, but he had no intention going to Them for help. Oh dear, things were getting complicated...

 

*

 

Meanwhile Mrs Manners, Louise, had showed James and Jamie into a large kitchen at the back of a new build house overlooking Grandpoint. She was heavily with child and struggled on crutches to walk. Jamie was worried for the wee woman and was impressed at the gentle way the guard – the policeman! – spoke. He explained they had come to see her husband, who had spoken to a colleague and requested an interview. She seemed unafraid, with nothing to hide, and they had followed her, at which point the sergeant had offered to make tea.

Jamie looked out of the window, wildwoods, scrublands and a metal trackway – a railway! He remembered Victoria telling him about them. He wanted to ask the pastor’s wife how she was, how long to go, but childbirth was woman’s business, and although the Doctor would be cross with him and Zoe laugh, he just couldn’t shake off some things from his own time. Fortunately, Hathaway asked.

“Two months yet.” She seemed to catch the men’s looks. “It’s twins. A boy and a girl. And I’ve put my hips out. Thank you,” she finished, as the skinny sergeant handed her a cup of tea. He put one in front of Jamie. Tea was something Jamie had learnt to appreciate from the ‘future’. While he sipped it he wondered how a woman could know what her unborn children would be, and marvelled yet again at all the wonders he saw. He was fairly sure in his day twins would be a surprise to the wife and midwife, let alone knowing if it were a boy or a girl! As for a sick cripple, with bad hips, he doubted she would survive the childbed. This woman was unafraid, merely annoyed at not being able to work! Jamie wondered if he could tell her to count her blessings and not moan. Fortunately the sergeant filled the silence.

“It’s a lovely view,” Hathaway said for want of something to say.

“Yes, from the back, but down on the left side it’s all old, crumbling 1950s council houses, student let Victorian monstrosities and opposite they’re building that new estate, starter homes and social housing. I worry about the value of the house. When my Dad bought it ten years ago for me to live in as I studied, the houses were better kept. Then the druggies moved in. And the squatters.” She stopped and sighed. “My husband doesn’t like me to talk like that. I wouldn’t make a very good vicar’s wife, would I?” she sighed again.

James wondered if that was why Manners hadn’t taken a proper stipend position. But that was rude. They had been told her husband would be home soon, but how soon was soon. He felt awkward, sitting in the immaculate kitchen, Aga and all, wine rack, all the middle class trappings, except the rack was empty, the fridge too, he had noticed when he fetched the milk for the tea; they were obviously struggling to maintain standards since Mrs Manners lost her job through ill health and disability. “It’s lovely here, though,” he said diplomatically, “must be good for bird watching.” He had spotted the binoculars and the notebooks and reference books.

“It is, yes.”

They sat and sipped their tea. The clock ticked. A blackbird trilled outside. A kite swooped down low. Jamie glared morosely. What must it be like, to be so out of your own time, James wondered? Of course, who knew what wonders Jamie had seen in the future or on other planets. If this time travelling alien business was true. Innocent and Lewis certainly had taken it at face value once UNIT had confirmed it. And the DNA sample couldn’t lie.

The clock ticked.

The fridge hummed.

The blackbird sang.

“It’s been so difficult for Dave!” Mrs Manners, Louise, suddenly blurted out.

“Aye, it can’t be easy, finding a body like that,” Jamie said sympathetically. “Not if you’re no used to it.”

“It’s not that. Well, of course it is that. But he recognised him, and he wondered, with all that has been happening...” she trailed off, actually putting her hand to her mouth, to stop her blurting out more.

“What happened?” Hathaway asked. Jamie noted the man’s voice had that cut glass, posh English way about it, sounding gentle and unaggressive, nevertheless possessing the authority and the expectation to be answered.

 

*

 

The Doctor held his breath as Dr Hobson lost her temper finally with Inspector Lewis’ stubborn refusal to know what she was talking about. The Doctor suspected he was as in the dark as he seemed to Hobson’s cryptic digs.

“You compromised the body!” Hobson hissed angrily. “Your DNA is in the very wounds, saliva, skin cells, what the hell were you playing at? Even your mentor wouldn’t spit or dribble on a body, even if he were about to pass out or throw up...”

“Well, he wouldn’t have been near enough!” Lewis joked feebly.

“Robbie!” Laura roared.

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t! I have no idea...”

“Mighten I interrupt? I do have an idea. And the good inspector did not do anything. Please, calm down, my dear...”

“If you call me your dear one more time I’ll slice your balls off with my scalpel!” Hobson retorted.

“If he has them,” Lewis muttered to himself, after all, who knew what aliens had or hadn’t got? “It was a joke Doctor. Wasn’t it Laura?”

The Doctor held up his hands placatingly. “I’m sorry to give offence, Dr Hobson. But I do know how the DNA came to be there, and it isn’t the good Inspector’s...”

“Yes it is. I have it on file.”

“I’ve had suspicions since I arrived here and the TARDIS detected strange disturbances. I was worried about a crude time corridor, I’ve read about some crude time travel experiments in Oxford when I was at the Academy, I can’t recall when or all the details, it was shut down however, but I had wondered... hoped... it was nothing to do with your murder. But now I see we are talking about a time breach sideways in time. But the coincidence is remarkable. It is and it isn’t Inspector Lewis’ DNA. What are the strange anomalies in the DNA? Lupine by any chance?”

“Now look here Doctor... whoever you are. I know UNIT has sanctioned your involvement...”

“U... what?” the Doctor asked, turning and catching sight of Lewis just before he stopped shaking his head and drawing a line across his throat with his index finger. After all, the UNIT brief said quite categorically not to mention them to him, as ‘we know him but he does not know us yet’. Hobson had obviously seen the gestures too and understood. The Doctor wondered if he wanted to know his future? Perhaps not. “Never mind Dr Hobson,” he said. “But, please, may I please look at the samples and structures? Also, since I’m here, might I see the body?”

Hobson huffed out a frustrated sigh. “Of course. But no one’s DNA is the same. But I assume you know that.”

“Apart from identical twins, no, not in this universe, no. I take it you don’t have an identical twin, do you, Inspector?”

 

*

 

Soon after Louise’s sudden outburst her husband returned. James stood and shook his hand and thanked him for offering information. Jamie tried to do likewise, but Hathaway’s manner’s that seemed old fashioned to Louise and Dave were centuries ahead of Jamie. It seemed so much hot air. Couldn’t they get on with the questioning of the man? He had found the body, after all.

Or not. As the pastor and the sergeant spoke, Jamie remembered some wee lasses had found the body at roughly the same time as Zoe, who wasn’t so old herself, but seemed so calm and mature by comparison. Then this man, and then the Doctor and himself, had arrived at the body. The pastor had vomited while the Doctor had tried to save him. Jamie, to his regret, had been so fascinated by the obvious wild beast injuries he had not heard Zoe tell that she was giving chase. He should have protected her. Aye, or even caught the beast-man!

If it was that? The Doctor told him to keep an open mind. The conversation seemed to be about bad landowners evicted the poor tenants, something he could relate too. So, there were plenty of human motives. Jealousy, and now the wanting to keep your home. Homes, clothes and technologies changed, people didn’t. Jamie had learnt that soon after he walked on board the TARDIS.

Hathaway was taking copious notes as Manners talked, his wife chipping in occasionally. The empty 1950s council houses, boarded up with wood and metal shutters as they were, had been the homes to some several families and single young people for some years – a whole community of squatters. They kept the gardens, grew vegetables and flowers, and were not any bother in terms of noise – here Louise had sniffed, obviously disagreeing with her husband, mentioning something about bonfires.

“They didn’t have electricity – they used to have cooking fires Sergeant,” Manners explained. He went on to explain that Gulum construction had recently bought the site to expand the new build development the other side of the road and intended to renovate and refurbish the large three and four bed houses into studios and one-bed apartments. Likewise the huge, crumbling Victorian and Georgian town houses the other side, which were currently student and single young professional let, in theory, although many had been used to house vulnerable homeless single people and teenage mums, by the city council. They believed one might have been a cannabis factory, but the police had raided it some months ago. Louise added that another squatter had moved into that building, the last two up two down Victorian workers’ cottage at the end of the row adjoined to the grander town houses from the early part of the nineteenth century.

The most telling part, the relevant information, was the fact that over the past six months, first the squatters, then the students and council placed homeless people had been evicted, not very legally or nicely, by one Alan Marsh and a bunch of thugs under his direction. Finally they thugs had tackled the crackden in the last end cottage. It had been nasty and they believed the police were called. Hathaway assured them he would check the records once back at the station.

Things had then been eerily quiet for a few weeks, then the hippie commune of squatters, or some of them, had moved back in. And then the other squatter, who kept himself to himself moved in at the other, Victorian, end. He seemed a bit crazy, very unkempt, sometimes he was smile at you, other times snarl. He looked perpetually bewildered and terrified. They had no idea how he was living. Louise had the feeling he might even be poaching on Nature Reserve and University grounds, she had seen him a couple of times with a rabbit and once with a duck.

Marsh and his pack of heavies had returned three nights ago and dragged out the squatters, children and all, burning their belongings. Dave’s boss, Father Peter Bryson, had given them shelter ever since in the Church hall, if the sergeant would like to interview them. But be gentle, these people were traumatised and since they had not been quite living inside the law, were scared, understandable, of the police.

“Discretion and gentleness are my middle names,” Hathaway said, a little smile tipping up the corners of his mouth. What was wrong with that inspector, Jamie wondered, it wasn’t as if he were - well, normal, was it? Jamie had caught him looking at his sergeant’s arse more than one time in the short time he had known them.

Jamie was so busy wondering how to get these ill fated lovers together he nearly missed the rest of the information Manners told Hathaway, including the name of the strange, lone squatter and the fact that Manners had seen him only minutes before he saw the girls. He had looked crazy and wild, as if he were an animal hunting. He had been sniffing the air, and his eyes, well, um, Manners knew it sounded weird, but they had been yellow...

Jamie knew it!

Meanwhile, Hathaway was fishing around for a more rational explanation, but his fingers slipped into his pocket, where he had taken to carrying a rosary with him. He curled his fingers tightly around the crucifix. He centred himself. Right. Procedure. That was what Lewis had been demanding, even if the unthinkable were true, carry on with proper procedure, or else you were lost. James thought himself back to the night before, to sleeping on Lewis’ sofa, Lewis’ smell in the pillows, and told himself that Himself was wise...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for missing a couple of days - RL stress! It also means that chapters 6&7 haven't been turned from longhand written notes to laptop yet, so maybe no posting tomorrow either. Sorry
> 
> But, one the other hand, being too ill to cook meant two trips to Mission Burrito in King Edward Street as it is the best place to go for cheap and healthy vegan/gluten free food. This is where Lewis and Hathaway are before the murder and the TARDIS arrives, in chapter one, remember? Well, on Wednesday my overloaded with shopping wheelchair knocked over equipment as the Lewis TV crew were fitting the estate agents next door for a location and on Thursday I had to wait while a shot was taken before the nice crewman let me through to buy our rice boxes. I may even be in a shot coming out!!! Alas, no Mr Whately and Mr Fox that I could see :(


	6. Chapter 6

When James Hathaway and Jamie McCrimmon returned to the station they checked into the canteen first, to see if Zoe had returned. The Doctor had given her instructions to be back at the station for ‘tea time’.

“It’s early yet,” Hathaway reassured Jamie, whom he could see was getting into a bit of a panic. “I’m sure she’s fine. She told me she wanted to try to squeeze in at least the Ashmolean and University Museums as well as the Museum of Science and the Bodlian. That should take at least an afternoon, if she only glances at each exhibit. How about I get us some coffee?”

“Tea,” Jamie said, smiling up at the lanky thing. “Thanks. I’ve no got the hang of coffee, and it does strange things to the Doctor, he’s too much on the go without adding to it.”

“Fine. Tea it is.”

 

*

 

Lewis and the Doctor returned to the station just as James and Jamie were getting comfortable with their tea, while Hathaway chased up the reports from Drugs and Community concerning any raids, dealers, factories and civil disturbances. As he did so he had tried to explain the workings of the internet, intranet, PNC, and computer records, and access in general to an eighteenth century illiterate. Not that he was illiterate now, Jamie was at pains to explain how one of the first things the Doctor had done when he joined him was teach him his letters and numbers. Still, he didn’t seem that bothered or interested in explanations, saying only, “Aye, that thing,” occasionally. But he was quick to take in the actual information, however, whatever and however it was imparted, linking reports of the cannabis factory to two of the squatters, who had later been arrested for affray following their evictions.

Hathaway grasped quickly what Jamie was getting at and typed in the names of the two squatters. They both had a police record an arm long, mostly for affray, disturbance of the peace, and obstruction, most of which had taken place at peace and anti-cuts protests back in the eighties, road protests in the nineties, and anti-capitalist demonstrations in the current century. Typically, one, Simon Strange, was known as ‘Swampie’, the other, Bill Patel, was known as ‘Gandhi’, but seemed not to follow his hero and namesake, judging by his conviction for assaulting a police officer and a second prison term for common assault on his girlfriend. There were also a list of cautions and fines an arm long each, on possession of Class B and C drugs, naturally. Most interesting of all the convictions was one of Strange’s convictions, a fine and the dog destroyed, for owning a ‘dangerous dog’. PNC also listed he had been suspected of being involved in the dog fights up Holton way back in 2004/5/6, but nothing had been proven.

Jamie had been arguing with Hathaway that a wee fighting dog could never have caused those injuries, the size of the teeth, for starters, and why couldn’t the silly boy accept that they were looking for a werewolf, when Lewis burst into his office in a foul mood, followed by a worried looking Doctor. Jamie got up immediately from his perch on the end of Hathaway’s desk and touched the Doctor’s arm, asking if he were alright. Hathaway turned and looked up at his boss, flinching and flushing slightly as Lewis flung his jacket on the back of his chair with a choice swearword.

“Bloody, bloody doctor!”

Alarmed, Hathaway looked to the Doctor standing in the doorway. Jamie moved protectively in front of his friend. “Not me, the pathologist. She’s made some startling discoveries. Ooh, is that tea Jamie? Thank you.”

“What’s that then?”

“I’ll explain later. Where did you get that tea Jamie? Were their cakes? Biscuits? Is this a good time for jammie dodgers or have they stopped being made? We ate them in the Underground, with that business with the Yetis and the Great Intelligence? Do you remember? I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some more.”

Jamie, understanding that the Doctor wished to give Inspector a wide berth for a while, replied, “Aye, the canteen, there were these little packets of biscuits. I think some of them might be those ones. I’ll show ye.” They closed the door behind them.

“I’ll get you some tea Sir,” Hathaway said, standing, watching the door close on their strange UNIT consultants.

“No. Stay. I don’t need tea. I just need my head to stop hurting and this bloody case to make sense.”

“I have a suspect Sir, well, at least two, but one seems more likely. Not forgetting the ex girlfriend and the Russian boyfriend...”

“We have a suspect too, but you’ll not believe it. I don’t bloody believe it! Damn!”

“But Sir, the victim has been working for Gulum Construction and Gulum Lettings, he took a bunch of thugs and evicted a hippie commune one side of the Manners, and a mixed let of homeless people and students the other side. One of the evicted hippies, who is not such a hippie really, he has form, Sir, including using and owning dangerous dogs and...” Hathaway knew he wasn’t being very clear, that he was babbling almost, but he didn’t like the sick, defeated, look on his boss’ face, and Jamie’s talk of werewolves too had made him very uncomfortable.

Lewis had been sitting at his desk, head in his hands, in his shirtsleeves, his tie loosened. He looked up and watched his sergeant uncharacteristically pace and babble with sad, heavy, almost hangdog eyes. Eventually he snapped,

“Shut up!”

Hathaway shut up immediately, looking hurt and confused. His boss had only ever shouted at him twice, once over his keeping the fact he’d found Mrs Lewis’ killer and That Time, as that afternoon after the university’s gay pride was forever termed in his head, with very large capital Ts.

“I’m sorry Sir,” he stumbled out.

“Just shut up James! Stop looking for rational explanations. Rival gangs, evicted crusties with big illegal dogs, abused exes looking for revenge, none of this will work lad. There is no bloody rational explanation. We have the killer’s DNA, conclusive proof. Except you know what?

“What?” James almost whispered, afraid of the supernatural, or given UNIT, alien, answer.

“It’s me. I’m the prime suspect. My DNA is crawling all over the victim’s wounds...”

“Could you have...?” James began, but trailed of, Lewis was the best detective he had ever worked for, of course he would never have accidentally contaminated evidence.

“’Course I bloody didn’t James! Dammit! The Doctor is talking about dimension gates and wormholes in space and time and parallel worlds... It’s my DNA but it isn’t, as it’s also a wolf’s DNA and then Laura says it’s got something else. The Doctor called it the...” Lewis paused and looked up at James again, who was standing stock-still, white as a sheet, looking down on him in horror. “The Doctor called it the shift trigger, always seen in lycanthropotic life forms...” he shrugged.

“But... but... there still could be a normal explanation. We have people with motive, opportunity and form...”

“For all we know James, this... this other me has motive. I don’t know. All I know is stupid Hammer Horror movies from the 70s, snuggled up on the back row with Val, and comics when I was a nipper in the fifties and sixties. What do I know of real... werewolves? Maybe they aren’t animals, maybe they’re just as rational as a wolf as they are a man...?”

“Would you listen to yourself Sir? You sound crazy. I won’t have it!” Hathaway even stamped his foot, just to show the universe it wasn’t to go changing the rules like that.

“Right. Tea, you said. Good plan. And procedure. That’s what I said last night. So let’s treat this like any normal case. A werewolf is still a person with an identity, a motive, and so on. Fetch us some tea then lad, then report on your interview with the vicar.”

 

*

 

“So, this DN whatisit is like the fingermarks, no two people have them?”

“Almost, Jamie, almost,” the Doctor replied, misjudging his dunked jammie dodger and watching it dissolve over his fingers. Jamie wanted to lick it off for him but they were surrounded by police and he wasn’t sure if loving another man was illegal or legal or somewhere in the middle, like his own time. Last two times they were back on Earth in England it had been against the law! Besides, sometime things were best left private anyway. The Doctor licking his finger before continuing distracted him, and he struggled to hear the Doctor go on, talking around his fingers,

“I think the good Inspector is in shock. It’s too much to get your head around in one go, lycanthropy and a parallel world... I don’t think we are talking about the beasts of this universe’s mythology, you know, but a civilisation based on those who were, perhaps descended from upright wolves and yet have shape-shifting powers... then again...” he looked up. “Of course!”

“What?”

“We must go back to that couple you and Sergeant Hathaway talked to, but with the Inspector. If they recognise him then we know my guess is correct!

 

*

 

As the Doctor and Jamie were returning to Lewis’ office they met the inspector and his sergeant on their way out.

“Going somewhere Inspector?” the Doctor asked innocently.

Inspector Lewis had the grace to look embarrassed. “We’re going back to the Manners, after we’ve visited his boss and the squatters living in his church hall. We’ve got to get a wriggle on here, he’s expecting us in ten minutes.”

“I take it you have no objection to my joining you?”

Lewis shook his head. Of course he did, everything about the man and his theories were making him feel very uncomfortable at the moment.

“Us, you mean?” Jamie asked the Doctor.

“Ah, Jamie. I’m rather worried about Zoe. I’d hate for the poor girl to have to fend for herself another night.”

“Aye. That’s true. But I don’t know this city and time Doctor, how will I find her in all those colleges and shops and museum things?”

“James, go and get Mr McCrimmon one of those tourist maps from the front desk and mark on where Miss Heriot said she was going.”

“Will do.”

“Might Jamie borrow your phone, too sergeant?”

“It’s a police property,” Hathaway replied tersely.

“I noticed you have a second phone, your personal one. Just for a couple of hours. So Jamie can keep in touch.” He held out his hand.

Hathaway glanced at Lewis, who shrugged and then nodded. Hathaway handed the Doctor his Nokia and left them to fetch the map, listening to the Doctor explain how it worked to Jamie as he left. He was surprised at how quickly the eighteenth century Highlander picked it up.

 

*

 

Father Peter Bryson was an older man, growing quite frail, walking with a stick, but still with a ramrod straight back and upright in his bearing. He had the aura of a man once very active and sporty, and bearing his cross of infirmity with difficulty. Despite his age, he wore; rather than stereotype little rimless round glasses, some funky, trendy, rectangles in bright purple leopard print fames. Hathaway thought they might have been FCUK and had seen some similar at his own opticians for around £150! The tiny bit of him that was still an almost priest strongly disapproved of such decadence. His own secret frames were nowhere near so ostentatious, despite the cost of his suits!

Father Peter shook all three men’s hands, made no comment either way when the scruffy short man was introduced only by a title and as a UNIT consultant, and led them round the back of his gothic church to a squat, square redbrick utilitarian building labelled ‘the new hall’ on a bright sign.

Inside were camps beds arranged in family groupings. In the middle was a mess of papers, crayons, glue and about five children from one to seven and a couple of women in long skirts with long hair. Two teenagers were laid on their camp beds. At the very end an old fashioned cathode-ray tube TV on a trolley with caster wheels with a freeview set top box and aerial precariously balanced on top of that was showing CBBC’s Horrible Histories. Four older children in a mix of brightly coloured but worn out clothes and hand knitted jumpers were arranged around it.

Two more women and a man were about, and a man was bustling in the kitchen. The smell of something beany and spicy was wafting out. It looked and felt like a cross between a church camp, a hippie commune, and a church hall full of refugees in shock. Everyone looked up and regarded the men suspiciously.

“Um,” began Father Peter, “these are the gentlemen I said were coming. Please, you’ve done nothing wrong, they need your help.”

“Aye,” Lewis smiled at the collective sets of eyes now all glaring at him and Hathaway, including the older children. 

The younger ones, however, were all looking at the Doctor, who had already squatted down near to them and was admiring their handiwork. The mothers, also the home educators, Hathaway had guessed, had already decided that art therapy was the way to go, as Hathaway could see pictures of smashed things and burning homes. His boss went on,

“A man was murdered. In the course of our investigation we have come to know he was not a very nice man, particularly to you. So, although you might be glad he’s dead, we really do need to find his killer.”

“He was killed in a most dreadful manner,” the Doctor said, standing. “Hello, I’m the Doctor, I’m not actually with the police. Well, I am, as I came in their car, but I’m not connected with them in anyway. I’m helping them. Perhaps we can all brainstorm ideas away from the little ones?”

As one the adults, teens, and older children, looked at an older woman with wild, long, grey, hair, dressed in a flowered dress over wide legged blue cotton trousers. “Let’s go to the garden,” she said, “Angie and Ted, you look after the others.” Angie and Ted were obviously the teenagers. The girl, Angie, rolled her eyes and sighed, but Ted got of his bed and went to sit among the colouring and crafts and smaller ones.

The garden turned out to be the garden of remembrance on the edge of the cemetery, naturally. The hippies all stood in a defensive semi circle around the two police officers and the strange little man. The Doctor was the only one who smiled.

“First,” Hathaway began forcefully; trying to take control of this interview, sensing the Doctor was about to ask something supernatural, “we are looking for two of your commune...”

“Or not actually with you,” the Doctor interrupted, holding a hand to stop Hathaway, his bumbling charade falling off him like a cloak. “In fact, one man, a squatter from the other end of the houses to you, the smaller row of Victorian cottages I believe?” He looked to Hathaway, who nodded reluctantly, then glanced angrily to his boss, who sighed and rubbed his eye.

“He’s an older man. We believe he’s been living rough, hunting for his food, in the burnt out end house, the one that used to be a crackden, according to Drugs at the station,” Lewis added.

“Bad business that,” a bearded man in red jeans said.

“Made us all feel not safe,” added the grey haired woman. “We were glad when it was closed down.”

“Not by your lot though,” the man said. There was a family resemblance; all three men noted it, a son perhaps? Younger brother?

“No,” Lewis sighed heavily. “Although it was being watched and they had plans, working with the council and housing association. But then the whole row of properties were sold on.”

“To Gulum Construction and Lettings,” Hathaway added.

“They sent thugs. Or someone did. When they moved on the crackheads, it was okay. A relief really. But then they came for us. Same thugs. We thought it was the new company, but we couldn’t get proof.”

“We have some now. We’ve passed it onto a colleague of ours,” Lewis said. “But the Doctor was asking about this man who was seen near the victim by several witnesses, he was seen minutes before the victim was discovered, and running away afterwards.”

“We don’t have a clue to his identity though,” Hathaway added, “only those we spoke to think he was some kind of homeless, mentally ill, man who moved in to the end terrace after it had been fire bombed.”

“Do you know who the policemen are talking about?” the Doctor asked gently, his eyes raking across the circle of crusties and hippies, watching them grow uncomfortable, and their eyes all dart to Lewis’ face and then slide away hurriedly.

“Yes,” the older woman, their spokeswoman and leader, such as they had, said finally.

“Can you describe him for us?”

“Like the Inspector, really. It’s uncanny. He was unshaven with longer hair, really unkempt and dressed in rags, and really smelly, he’s unwashed...”

“He’s totally rank, really,” added a younger woman, dressed in a pink and grey slip dress and chunky cardigan. “But other than that...”

“It could be you, inspector,” the man in the red jeans added, nodding, not really looking Lewis directly in the eye.

Lewis nodded, but the entire commune could see he was unnerved and uncomfortable. If the scientist from UNIT hadn’t been there, maybe they would have thought a brother, but several of the older, protest-scared eco warriors had encountered UNIT in the past, and were a little freaked out themselves. They looked to their leader, who pulled the conversation around, looking only at the Doctor.

“Last time we saw him he’d caught a rabbit,” she said. “That was four days ago, just before we were moved on again. It was dusk, and he was walking back across the meadow from the woods. He was naked and there was blood on his mouth. It was so weird; I just slipped out of sight. I was gathering nettles for a soup.”

“It weren’t the first time he’d been seen naked at night, or early morning, was it?” another woman said, a young woman in a vest top and green tiered floor length skirt. She had been the one busy with the children.

There were murmurs of no and shakes of the head.

“Or blood on his mouth,” a young man with a shaven head dressed in multi coloured trousers and a black tee added, her young man probably, by the close way they stood.

“Last time I saw him dressed he was wearing the same ragged blue trousers, would have once been part of a suit, I reckon, and a white ripped vest, not a top, you know, proper old fashioned gent’s under vest.

“Thank you,” the Doctor said. “And you are all sure that he looks rather like a wild, unkempt, deranged version of Inspector Lewis here?”

Lewis began to sweat, his discomfort was apparent to everyone. Hathaway stood protectively next to him, pressing himself close, biting his thumbnail. The collective commune looked anywhere but at the inspector, his sergeant, or the strange man called the Doctor.

“Yes,” their spokeswoman finally said.

“Thank you again. I do hope you find somewhere to establish your commune. More people need to live as frugally as you if the world is to stay so undamaged,” the Doctor said kindly, walking away, obviously expecting the policemen to follow.

“What about...?” Hathaway began.

“Later Sergeant Hathaway, later,” the Doctor called over his shoulder. “You can follow your leads, hunches, and suspects after we have ruled out this one. This one is urgent. The sun sets in less than an hour...”

Once the three men were back in Lewis’ car, the Doctor said, “Well, I suppose we could still follow your plan Inspector, and visit the vicar and his wife, but they will probably only confirm the commune’s description of our suspect.”

“Me, you mean?” Lewis huffed out an angry sigh. “Aye. You want me to drive us straight to that burned out house.”

“If you would Inspector, before sunset would be by far the best. A call for back-up might be an idea.”

“I’ll be laughed at, you know. Let’s see if he’s there first, okay? Ask a few questions. I call for back up if we need to bring him in. for all your talk of parallel universes and dimension gates and wormholes, he might just be lost and gone a bit mad.” He might have a living Val he wants to get back home too, Lewis didn’t add, the thought of another him had lead invariably to another Val, one who had never been hit by a getaway driver on a pavement. One who did all her Christmas shopping in Oxford rather than Oxford Street in London. Who lived in a family where Mark, not being grief stricken and ignored, had never felt the need to run off to the other side of the world, still hating him. He’d go a bit crazy if he lost all that.

Mind you, he had, hadn’t he!


	7. Chapter 7

It took five strikes of the flint to get the blasted fire going. He was hungry. He’d not eaten for some while, since he had...

Wasn’t to think of that. Couldn’t be helped. It was just. Once he had had that right. He had once been the law. A life for a life. That woman had lost her baby and all those animals of the hippies. He had been so proud since he had been here not to ever take their chickens, too...

Roast duck should fill his stomach before nightfall. If he wasn’t hungry he’d do less damage...

He looked at the skyline and sighed. Nightfall wasn’t long and there was the full moon to contend with, the third moon since he had arrived... here!

Here being exactly were he left but not. It hadn’t taken him too long to work out this Oxford wasn’t his, this world wasn’t his, but a lot longer to work out what and were and how, if he had at all. Far, far, too much to get his head around. It was only because his Lyn and Mark were such geeks and loved all that sci fi and fantasy nonsense he had had any grounding at all.

He attached the plucked duck to his makeshift spit as the fire began to grow nicely and he sat down beside it, rocking slightly. He needed to get home; this place was dangerous and cruel!

 

*

 

It took less than five minutes to get to there in the car. As they approached the house Lewis remarked in wonder that he and Val had looked at this house as a possibility when they had first moved back down from Newcastle and were living with his mother in law.

The Doctor looked at him sharply, “Interesting, isn’t it Inspector?” he asked cryptically. Lewis almost snarled and looked away, not wanting to contemplate any similarity with the suspect.

It took another two minutes to park behind the boarded up, burnt out, end house that their suspect was squatting in. They could smell something cooking as they made their around the ripped bits of wood and corrugated iron fencing that had been ripped down into the back garden, over grown with weeds and grass grown almost to the men’s waists, above the Doctor’s! He led the two policemen. They could see a fire flicker in the back room; smoke pouring out of the broken, empty window frames. Over the fire squatted a man dressed in a tattered suit.

The Doctor pointed to a line of bushes and broken furniture and the three men squatted behind, hidden, observing. The Doctor looked up at the sky, the sun sliding down beyond the horizon, the reddening of the western skyline already beginning. The east already was growing dark blue, the full moon clearly visible as it rose.

“I suggest you call for back-up Inspector,” the Doctor whispered. “But quietly. His hearing will be far better than yours.” Both detectives noted how the Doctor did not include his own hearing as deficient compared to a possible werewolf.

“I can’t call for back-up,” Lewis hissed back angrily. “What do I say? We have no evidence. I’ve not discussed this suspect with the CS at all. What the hell do I say anyway? I’d be the laughing stock of the station!”

“What about concerns for a mental ill man living rough who maybe you suspect?”

“I have no evidence,” Lewis repeated. “He’s doing no harm. If I say that I’ll get a community officer and a social worker and maybe a psychiatric nurse here. Do we want to put them all at risk, if you think there is one now?”

“If I’m right Inspector, every second we delay here is a risk. The moon has risen and it’s twilight. Once the light has gone he’ll change, so if we are going to reason with him we better do it fast. If you can’t call for back-up, what are we going to do? Best we come back in the morning.”

“No way.” And with that, Lewis nodded to his sergeant and stood up, heading across the grass to the open back door leading into a very fire blackened kitchen.

Annoyed, the Doctor scuttled after them and tried to attract Hathaway’s attention. He managed to as they got to the door. The Doctor was sure that by now they could be heard and smelt if not seen.

“Phone Jamie. Tell him to get here,” the Doctor urged, pulling on the grey sleeve of Hathaway’s jacket. “Stay here out of sight and if needed, call for back-up.”

Hathaway nodded and slipped behind a laburnum tree that was by the kitchen door.

 

*

 

Robbie was intent on his dinner. It smelled good, and he needed to eat soon. He stood up with the spit in hand, the smell of roasted foul over-powering and filling his nostrils. The fire spat as grease dripped into it. As he took the first bite he froze, he was sure he could hear footsteps. He let his hand holding his meal drop and sniffed the air.

Intruders!

Again!

He hoped it was those damned heavies from the construction company. They deserved everything they got. If not, he prayed he could control himself...

*

Lewis kicked in the sitting room door and saw a man standing in front of him, staring at the doorway, dressed in the tattered remains of clothes that were so familiar to him. They were, after all, his clothes, or once were, for they were an a cashmere jersey in red over blue shirt and the trousers of one of his better suits, the dark blue one, but the clothes were now ripped, ragged and dirty with mud, brick dust and blood. His hair was growing out of its cut and he had a full, untrimmed, beard. 

The man’s eyes stared back at him with his own bright blue ones under the shaggy hair...

 

*

 

How could this be!

Yet, hadn’t he decided months ago after the first few weeks he was in some other Oxford, some other world. He had fallen down the rabbit hole, gone mad, and now, here was another him!

“You?” he said gruffly, he had spoken so little over the past three months.

“Aye, it would seem so,” Lewis said carefully, glancing at the Doctor, who had come into the room beside him slowly, making no sudden movements, as one would an animal. He stared at the man, the other him, he couldn’t take his eyes off his own face staring back at him, bruised, scratched, and bloodied, covered with the unkempt beard.

“You should go,” Robbie snarled. “It’s nearly time.”

“What happened?” the Doctor asked gently. “I know you have been pulled here from your own universe.”

“I don’t know. I was chasing a suspect down Queen’s Lane. There was an explosion, a flash, something. I thought I was being shot at. I went to call for back-up and saw he was dead, there right in front of me, burned up. He smelt rank, not right. My phone wouldn’t work. It took me hours to find the police station. It was in the wrong bloody place. Clothes were different. Shops. You have cars in the city centre. The Westgate monorail up to the park and rides were gone. Too many houses on meadows. It wasn’t right! It’s not right!” Robbie was now shouting, panicked.

 

*

 

Meanwhile Hathaway had called Jamie McCrimmon and gave him a brief summary of what was happening. Jamie had just found Zoe, but when he heard he was needed he set off at a fast run, he could remember perfectly where they had gone earlier in Hathaway’s car. It was, however, an almost two mile trek.

Zoe had begun to follow him, asking all sorts of questions, starting with where the phone had come from and going on from there. He could not wait for her. He only hoped she would give up and go back to the TARDIS or the police station.

 

*

“Did you kill him? The man in the meadow?” the Doctor asked gently.

“Yes,” Robbie replied sadly. “He was hurting people. Many people. The police here did nothing. I watched those gentle people suffer. And the ill ones. The ones polluted by your monstrous drugs. I’m sorry. I don’t make a habit of killing people. But they needed defending. What kind of law do you have?” This last question was directed at the other Lewis, with not so much anger, as sadness and despair.

“We do out best,” Lewis said sadly. “Sometimes the memory of killing to defend others never leaves us, does it?” he said, meeting his own sad eyes, realising that his other self had gone completely mad. He had too without Val, but fortunately he’d been in his own world, and not called to that kind of decision in a moment, as he had several times earlier in his career as a sergeant. But this had been different, the other him had hunted and killed. Not pushed gun away or grabbed the child and watched the murderer fall. But what did he know, he had not seen what Marsh and his heavies had done to this Robbie’s adopted neighbours.

The stood staring at each other, never blinking or looking away, trying to get the measure of the other... 

The Doctor decided to break the silence. “I can help you,” he said, fingers crossed behind his back. He had only slipped out of the universe by accident once or twice. He knew TARDISes could visit other, parallel worlds, despite it being forbidden by the High Council. After all, in the Time of Rassilon, so myth said, all other Gallifreys had been obliterated; they were the only ones, the only Lords of Time, in the entire multiverse.

“How?” Lewis turned to look at him. Alien he might be, intelligent without question, but travelling in time maybe, but between worlds seemed a step too far. Besides, he could see the crossed fingers.

“Who is he?” demanded Robbie with a snarl. His eyes were changing, glowing, growing yellow.

“This is the Doctor, he’s a sort of expert on the alien and weird.”

“I’m no alien. You are. You have no wolfbloods in your world. Instead was have half-cocked stories that your children frighten themselves with. You are a wild, unordered, immodest people, who let your young roam in packs and take no care of the sick and the vulnerable.” He turned to the Doctor. “Can you take me home to my...”

Robbie froze, his speech tailed off. He stared beyond the Doctor and this other, timid, him. He couldn’t believe it.

Thinking he had heard Lewis shout earlier, Hathaway had ignored the Doctor’s instructions and walked in to the sitting room.

“James,” Robbie breathed out. “My James.”

“No,” James said, pressing himself to the wall. Did the Doctor suspect something, was that why he had wanted him kept outside? The man was Lewis, and yet was not... he was changing from the unkempt tramp to something else as he looked. The blue eyes were half yellow, glittering and feral.

Lewis looked from this other Robbie to James and back again. “He’s my James!” he shouted, wondering what he was doing, not liking the predatorial way the other Robbie was moving towards Hathaway, movements growing more lupine with every step.

Robbie stopped in his tracked and stared back at the other Robbie, the one that belonged here, in this disordered world. He was confused, instinct and passion and fear growing as the wolf took over. It smelt like his James, looked like him...

“He’s mine!” Lewis repeated in a snarl, stepping in front of James in a second, feeling his own hackles rise, feeling some old atavistic fear of the wild, of the wolf, about this man, this other Robbie...

The bearded Lewis stood stock still a moment, staring at his likeness as he had been before, in the moments he had arrived, snarling, his eyes glittering, turning from glittering pale blue and yellow through to bright, shining, greeny-gold. Then he shoved Lewis out of the way and took a step towards James that became a leap as the last inky-blue purple in the sky turned black and night fell...

The wolf landed on James, knocking him clean on his feet, even though he has been braced against the wall. He was momentarily winded and his head cracked on the ground, not stunning him, but hurting his ear and the side of his head. He felt the wolf paw at him, rolling him on to his back, and licking the side of his ear. He closed his eyes, terrified; he was going to be eaten. Or worst; bitten and turned into a werewolf. Or was that still a myth? The Doctor had said so much was myth and babbled about different evolution and biology and universes that James’ entire world was by now upside down and all the learning and knowledge he had in his head, all the exams and qualifications he had passed, no longer seemed to count for anything. He was going to die in ignorance, and that was frustrating if not unforgivable!

After a few moments James realised he was neither dead not harmed in anyway, apart from being pinned to the floor on his back. He opened his eyes and saw two bright pale blue wolf eyes regarding him with intelligence, indeed, with confusion, as if this other Lewis, this wolf-Lewis, had expected him to change too, to become a wolf. He reached up, becoming aware that his sleeve was ripped as he did so, to touch the wolf, to stroke the face very gently.

The wolf looked back with sadness, longing, and love. He nuzzled James’ hand. James petted back. The wolf leaned over and nuzzled his face, his ear, licking his ear again. James closed his eyes again, afraid again, but not of death this time, but of something else entirely. ‘My James’, this Robbie had said, ‘my James’. This other James had everything he wanted, everything he longed for, everything he was denied, everything that was wrong and sinful but so needed...

Meanwhile the Doctor was talking to the wolf, trying to plead with him that this wasn’t his James Hathaway, he wouldn’t transform, that he belonged to this universe, and to please get off him and let him go. He could see the strange bonding that seemed to be going on and it alarmed him.

Lewis, however, only saw James pinned under the wolf, even if that wolf had been a man, his double, intelligence enough if more that a little mad, and was torn between reactions, that his sergeant was pinned under a wild animal and that his sergeant was in a hostage situation, held by the murderer they had come to apprehend. The key to keeping sane, as he had decided a day ago, was to keep everything as close to procedure as possible. He was casting around the room, lit only by the flickering fire and the street light outside the garden, for some form of weapon. He could find nothing and was stealing up the courage to tackle the wolf barehanded as Jamie entered the house.

No one noticed Jamie as he crept into the fire lit room. He heard the Doctor’s incessant babble as the foolish wee man tried to reason with the monster, as usual, and saw the policeman looking frantically around for a weapon, but mostly he saw a large dark brown wolf, greying at the paws and muzzle, pinning the lovely, shy, awkward, James to the floor, slobbering over his face. Without thinking he reacted quickly, pulling his dirk from his boot and throwing himself on the animal’s back. 

It was over in a flash, the wolf hadn’t the time to react to the assault before its throat was cut cleanly and effectively by Jamie’s practiced cut. He’d killed enough sheep and cattle in his time, for food, back home in his family croft, and enough English soldiers too. And all manner of monsters. This was just one more, so Jamie thought.

He stood up and kicked the dying beast off James, who howled and sat up, throwing himself over the creature.

“You killed him!” he cried angrily at Jamie, “You’ve killed him!” And he buried his face in the unblooded fur of his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've not tagged this major character death as our own universe's Robbie Lewis is fine. if I should have tagged it acccording to AO3 guidelines please correct me.


	8. Chapter 8

Jamie stood, looking down at what he had done, at the wolf’s carcass and the man whom he had supposed he had just saved seemingly weeping into the creature’s side. He felt the Doctor come to stand by his side, but did not move. He was panting heavily. He did not glorify in death. He waited for the Doctor’s anger; the Doctor too, hated death. The Doctor squeezed his shoulder gently,

“We saw him change. Until moments ago he was as much Robert Lewis as the Inspector standing there.”

Jamie said nothing, but watched Hathaway tighten his grip and the Inspector come up to him and squat down behind him, putting a hand between his thin shoulder blades and rub gently.

“Come away now James. He’s dead. I’m here.”

James looked up, his eyes burning with mostly unshed, painful, tears. “He wouldn’t have hurt me. He wouldn’t! I know!”

“We didn’t,” Lewis said gently. He put his hand out and touched the wolf’s fur, then, leaving his hold of James’ back, touched his own dark brown, greying hair on his own head, wonderingly.

James looked up at Jamie. “You killed him!” he spat out again. “He wasn’t hurting me! He wouldn’t! ‘My James’ he said.”

“Jamie couldn’t have known that Sergeant,” the Doctor said. “He saw a wolf pinning you to the floor. He saved you. You don’t know what the wolf in him wouldn’t have done. Or the man, for that matter.”

“Aye,” Lewis sat back onto his heels. “If I had a weapon I’d have done the same.” He looked up to Jamie, “Though not so cleanly, lad. He didn’t suffer, did he? This wolf... me?”

Jamie shook his head. A werewolf was a monster. Why were they all so concerned, he could not figure out.

“Go clean your weapon,” the Doctor said quietly.

Jamie looked down at the dirk still in his hand, dripping red blood. He nodded mutely and went outside to wipe it in the long grass.

“’My James’ he said,” James repeated, climbing to his feet and wiping the back of his hand across his face. He looked down at his shirt and tie, horrified by the blood. He gasped.

“Yes, he did,” the Doctor said. “Inspector, do you have anything in the car for your sergeant to change into?”

Lewis shook his head. He was now sat on the floor beside the other Lewis’ body, his hand on his head. 

“He didn’t mean his sergeant, did he?” James clarified, looking at the floor, anywhere but Lewis, the Doctor, the body of the wolf, or, indeed, his own bloodied shirt.

“No,” the Doctor replied gently, “he didn’t.”

“Oh, and you can be sure can you?” Lewis spat out.

The Doctor shrugged.

“It didn’t sound like that. The way he looked at me. As a wolf. He loved me! He wouldn’t have hurt me any more than-”

“I would,” Lewis completed. “No. I suppose not. I’m sorry lad, I’m so sorry James. To us it just looked like he was going to kill you. He was an animal.”

“No,” James said, looking away. He walked away towards the fire. After a while of James looking into the fire, Robbie sat by his alternative self’s corpse, the Doctor stood in the middle, hearing the men’s loud thoughts although he didn’t want to, Hathaway spoke again, his voice dripping with all the sarcastic tones his public school cut glass rich brown voice could give, “So what do we do with it now Sir?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I should call UNIT. Or Innocent and she can call them.” Lewis stood up and looked at the Doctor. “What will they do to him? Will he change back when the sun rises?”

The Doctor shook his head sadly. “I very much doubt he will change now. He’s dead, so stays in the form he was at death. At least, in my limited experience, that’s how it works. As for UNIT, I realise I’m not supposed to know a future me will work for them as a scientific advisor, but it hasn’t been too hard to overhear.”

“I’m sorry, we were told...”

“That I shouldn’t know my own future. No, I shouldn’t, so I want no details. The fact I might chose to settle on Earth and have a job alarms me, and I absolutely must know no more!” He looked up to see Jamie had returned and was hovering awkwardly in the doorway. He supposed the dark of night and the light of a fire was not an uncomfortable, unfamiliar, thing to Jamie. He beckoned him over as he continued to speak to the detectives, “Having said that, what have you heard of them Inspector? Do you think they will dispose of the body or want to use it to understand shape shifting?”

Hathaway snorted. “Take a guess Doctor, we’re talking about scientists and the military!”

Lewis nodded to the Doctor. “As my clever sergeant says.”

“We could call in the RSPCA,” Hathaway suggested. “Fix our report so it was just an escaped wolf.”

Lewis shook his head,” No!” he snapped vehemently, “I want his remains treated with respect. I’m the closest thing that... he... that Robert Lewis has in this entire universe to family. I want him buried with respect. This had to happen. He killed a man. We couldn’t have put a werewolf in prison, so UNIT would have got him alive, and God knows what they would have done to him. I’ve heard Jamie, I’ve read what he said under caution, you can’t control your time machine in our universe Doctor, much less take him home, whatever you promised. I saw you cross your fingers behind your back.”

“I would have tried. There are planets in our universe where people like him have a civilisation. I would have found him a home.”

“Away from his Val? His James? Both? Away from his kids, man! No. He’d have gone more mad than he was going, if he’d not killed himself he’d have drunk himself into an early grave within years. It’s better this way. For him.” Lewis’ voice was thick with emotion; the Doctor noticed there were tears in the man’s eyes. He was about to suggest a plan when Lewis’ phone rang. The inspector pulled the phone from his pocket and looked at it,

“It’s your phone Hathaway?” he said, confused.

“Jamie has it,” Hathaway replied, mystified.

Jamie looked at the men and patted his sporran and shook his boot. “I must have dropped it,” he apologised, feeling worried.

“Ooh, for goodness sakes!” snapped the Doctor, and snatched the phone from the Inspector’s hand and answered it. “Hello. Inspector Lewis’ phone. Oh! Hello Zoe. Where are you...?”

“I’d just found her when you all called me,” Jamie said to the two detectives. He looked only at Lewis; he could not bear the sorrowful accusation in the sergeant’s eyes. He felt worse than ever as he listened to the Doctor talk to Zoe, give her the address and directions and then explain they had found the murderer, but he was dead, that Jamie had killed him, but it had all been a horrible misunderstanding.

*

 

When Zoe arrived she found Lewis squatting over the carcass of a dead wolf and he and the Doctor arguing, seemingly about how and where the body should be buried, and with what ceremony. Inspector Lewis was uncharacteristically distressed, or at least from what she had previously observed of the dour, grumpy, but very kind and gentle, older man. There seemed to be a choice between treating it as an animal or an alien to be handed over to UNIT. Inspector Lewis did not feel comfortable with either, and the Doctor apparently did not trust UNIT not to experiment upon the wolf to find what he was calling a ‘shift trigger’ gene. Zoe remembered how honourable Lethbridge Stewart had been during that business with IE and the Cybermen when they had been on Earth in the 1960s, and how committed to protecting the planet his newly formed UNIT had been. Still, she knew how any organisation could become corrupted and in what was a space of what felt like a few months for her, for UNIT it had been around forty years. No doubt Lethbridge Stewart had retired... or worse! Oh, how time travel could be so hurtful on a personal level as well as confusing at times. People she knew and liked were either dead and buried or not yet born, or even one or the other millions upon millions of unimaginable light-years away from where and when she stood here!

She looked again at the wolf; Lewis sat beside it as keeping watch. It did look rather like the beast she thought she had seen in the twilight in Deadman’s Walk, almost two days ago now. Now Lewis was insisting on waiting until the dawn to see if the body ‘changed’. Change into what? She didn’t feel as if she could interrupt an intense discussion between the Doctor and the inspector, so looked for Jamie in the gloom.

Jamie was hunched up in one corner, looking very miserable and unhappy. The sergeant was on the floor on the wall by the door, just beside her, although he hadn’t appeared to notice her, staring at the floor as he was. He was covered in blood, none his own she was glad to note. A fire burned in the middle of the floor, casting the only light, a roasted foul on a spit cast aside by the fire. It was all very peculiar.

The Doctor and Lewis had returned to their original topic of discussion. Zoe listened, confused, and tried to summarise the problems in her own mind. The RSPCA would burn the wolf. But if Lewis called it in directly to his boss, Chief Superintendent Innocent, she would call UNIT and who knew what they might do? The Doctor argued back that he did already know of UNIT, he had encountered them in the sixties, but he was trying not to remember the fact that was supposed to be hidden, that in the future, his personal furture, he would work for them, as that means he must at some personal future point settle on earth, and he couldn’t imagine settling down anywhere, ever! He was getting quite animated with this fact.

“Aye, you said before Doctor,” Jamie said curtly. Oh dear, had they had a tiff? Zoe wasn’t keen on being around the two of them when they had one of their rare disagreements. Or anywhere near their bedroom in the TARDIS when they made up. She resolved to go for a long swim in the pool followed by a long read in the library when they got back home to the TARDIS.

Lewis stood up abruptly, but he didn’t notice Zoe, no one had yet noticed her and she was unwilling to interrupt, hidden in the shadows caused by the flickering fire. She was still uncertain on what she had in come on. The Doctor had explained briefly on the phone, but a werewolf, a man from another universe whom was also Inspector Lewis; it was two illogical pieces of a puzzle. She knew all about multiple universes stacked on one another, the theory of it, of course, but it was just another interesting quantum physics puzzle, not a fact! As for the myths, legends, and stories of werewolves, well! That was what they were; fairy stories.

“Right,” Inspector Lewis said as he stood, “if the choices are treating Robbie as an animal to be disposed of or a scientific curiosity to be dissected, I’m going to sit here watching over him til dawn, and if doesn’t change I will damn well bury him myself, with honour.”

Jamie pushed away from the wall and stood straight, looking directly at the inspector. “Aye. Good plan. I will gladly help you bury him with honour Robbie. We’ll need to clear the grass and weeds and dig a deep grave. We have all night while you keep vigil over your kin.”

Lewis nodded slightly to Jamie, “Thank you.”

“I do have my doubts he will change Inspector. But burying what looks from a distance to be a big dog in a back garden will not alarm any neighbours,” the Doctor said, then he turned, “Hello Zoe. Have you been there long?”

Zoe took a step forward. “I didn’t mean to pry, I didn’t like to interrupt.”

“Thank you for your discretion,” the Doctor said, as Jamie came up to Zoe to pat her shoulder,

“I’ve been fair worried about ye.”

“I couldn’t keep up.”

Meanwhile, Hathaway stumbled to his feet. Shock was setting in now, and he felt cold all over. The blood had dried on his shirt, stiffening it a little. “I’ll fetch the torches from the car, Sir. It sounds like the best plan, given the circumstances. I’m sure there must be a spade or two about this old house somewhere. I noticed an old garden shed at the bottom of the garden as we came in. And there is that old lean-to by the kitchen door. Both might have any number of gardening implements. I’ll dig the other Robbie Lewis’ grave.”

“Aye. And I’ll help.”

James and Jamie stared at each other. “I’m sorry,” Jamie said, “there was no other way. It looked as if he were going to eat you.”

James’ ducked his head and then looked up sadly. “Yes, I do understand how it seemed to all of you. And he had already killed a man. Perhaps as Inspector Lewis says, it is the best thing. He’s at peace now. I don’t think he had been, since he arrived here.”

“No James, I don’t he was,” the Doctor said gently. “Zoe, why don’t you go with the sergeant to find the lights from the car. Jamie, you find the best place to dig the grave.”

 

*

 

James didn’t say much to Zoe, only turning to her as he lifted the car’s boot lid to enquire as to whether she had enjoyed her museum trips, to which she had replied,

“Oh! Who cares! It sounds like you have all had quite an adventure!”

“Adventure?” Hathaway repeated dryly. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Having everything one believes about the world and one’s beliefs turned upside down within 36 hours, ending with a man who looked like your boss declare undying love before changing into a wolf and leaping onto you and pinning you to the floor. Yes, I would think that qualifies as an adventure. One I much prefer in book form, happening to a fictional protagonist, thank you very much!”

Zoe reached out to touch the policeman’s arm, but checked the impulse as she noticed his slight flinch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flippant. Travelling with the Doctor shows us all sorts of wonders and adventures. I didn’t see what you all saw, so I’m struggling to understand.”

“But you did Zoe. That wolf is the man you chased, the thing you saw bent over the body. The man, the beast, the wolf – all Robbie Lewis from another dimension. If a Catholic Cambridge theologian can get my head around that, then I’m sure you can.”

“Yes, I’m sorry. I know about the theoretical possibility of parallel universes, of course.”

“So do we, this end of the twenty-first century,” Hathaway said, even more dryly.

“I know. I keep thinking about my grandmother, she lived somewhere near Oxford. She is still alive, a young woman in fact.”

“Perhaps the Doctor would let you visit her?”

“Oh no, he wouldn’t let me do that. It’s a paradox, you see. Or something to do with the timelines, anyway. Oh! I’m not explaining myself, and I usually do explain things well.”

Hathaway shrugged. “She needn’t know you are granddaughter from the future, need she? Here, take these, we can put up this arc-light and have a torch each.” Hathaway handed Zoe the large lamp while he piled four torches into the crook of his arm.

“If you have this large arc-light,” Zoe waved the light at the sergeant, “Do you need all the torches?”

“The more light the better,” he replied calmly. It was then Zoe noticed the tremor in his hand. She had seen it before, in many people who encountered the Doctor, especially after the Cybermen last time she had been on Earth. “Come one,” she said gently, “let me take a couple of torches too. You lock up the car and follow me in. I think you could do with a moment alone.”

As soon as she walked back to the burn out house she heard the strike of a light and smelt a nasty smell. She turned back to see him leaning on the car, smoking, inhaling the cigarette deeply. She had studied nicotine addiction in history. But, if it helped him right now, who was she to stop him and point out the dangers of addiction and lung tissue damage.

 

*

 

When James returned, two cigarettes later, he found Jamie had hung the arc lamp and two torches from the trees at the bottom of the garden and was currently hacking at the long grass with a pair of long gardening shears. Two spades and a rake were propped up by the arc light.

“I made a start,” Jamie said. “Feel a wee bit better now? Must be all a shock for ye, I forget, the strange life we have, that this is all new to other people.”

“Fine. Thanks,” James replied, a little tersely. He took off his jacket and hung it on a bush then picked up the rake. “I’ll clear this lot then,” he said.

 

*

While James and Jamie dug by flashlight and Robbie sat vigil by his alternative self, Zoe took the spare flashlight and explores. Upstairs she found a pile of blankets making a bed; a suit jacket lay on the top end as a pillow, and so she called the Doctor and Lewis to come upstairs. She was sure the Doctor would want to see what she had found, and somehow, from what she had overheard when she arrived, felt certain that Inspector Lewis needed to see it.

“What?” asked the Doctor, calling up the stairs.

“Do come. And bring the Inspector. He really needs to see this.”

“Why?” Lewis called loudly; Zoe guessed he had pushed the Doctor out of the way at the bottom of the stairs.

“A bed. And possessions. Do come. There are...” Zoe hadn’t finished her sentence before she heard the thump of feet on the bare wooden staircase. “...pictures,” she finished quietly as the Doctor shouted above her quieter voice,

“Careful Inspector! Take care, the fire may have caused structural damage.”

“I’m being careful,” Lewis called from the top of the stairs, standing on the landing, looking into the room where Zoe stood beside the pile of musty bedding. Zoe swung her torch back to the wall and towards the photos she had found.

On the wall were taped three tiny almost passport sized pictures; one was of Robbie and Val smiling together, one of Val and Mark on a beach, one of Lyn in her nurses uniform, and one of James and a baby. Lewis stepped forward and brushed the pictures of his wife, his children, with his fingertips, before his finger hovered, puzzled, over the other James and a baby. Was he Godfather? Stepfather? Had they adopted? Would he want a second family, at his time of life? He couldn’t imagine his James, this universe’s James, wanting to be a father. He stepped aback and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and opened it to show Zoe and the Doctor the same three photos, not, of course, including the one of James. 

The Doctor looked at Zoe, but she couldn’t understand what he meant, what he was trying to relay to her. This alternative, parallel, universe reality was frankly too confusing and frightening to know what to think. She needed to ask the Doctor the physics of it once they were back at the TARDIS. She watched and listened as the Doctor made soothing noises and promised some form of explanations later. 

Zoe left them to their stilted conversation and searched the jacket, being used as a pillow. She found two wallets, the first containing an empty space where the pictures went, Euros not pounds Stirling and bank cards from a bank that ceased trading 20 years ago, Inspector Lewis said, confused, as he came to stand over her, realising what she was doing. She passed it too him. It was identical to the one he had taken out of his own pocket, battered, elderly, brown leather with a beer stain on the bottom right corner. 

The second contained the warrant card. Adjudicator Secular Inspector Lewis. Zoe and Lewis both looked to the Doctor, confused. He snatched the warrant card from their hands.

“Ah, I thought as much. Judicial murder, Inspector. He arrested, tried and convicted Mr Marsh as a violent assailant and abuser, possibly even a murderer”

“What the...?” Lewis began. “You mean, like Judge Dredd?” he asked, not knowing quite whether to believe the Doctor. He was some form of werewolf and some kind of policeman with the powers of trial, and even execution. He doubted he could live with that!

While the Doctor tried to explain a little more about his theory of how the other universe conducted justice, Zoë continued to search the jacket pockets. She also found an unfamiliar item that looked half way between a smart phone and a tablet of this half of the century, they kind of thing she knew well from museums and old people – its battery was dead and she didn’t know the logo, and when she showed it to Lewis he confirmed that the company logo was unknown. Lewis looked at the charge point, confused, so Zoe doubted they could fire it up. The Doctor, of course, had to say he could see what he can do. Zoe, however, wasn’t sure they should know, or at least, this Robbie Lewis should not know, what it contained in terms of information. It could be case notes, a personal diary, more pictures and family photos, and who knew how more confusing and emotionally difficult that could be for the inspector.

“I hope you can. I want to know about this man he chased to get here. And what kind of policeman he was, exactly? And if his Val is alive? And what James was to him, exactly?”

“Ah,” says the Doctor, “I think you know the answer to that Inspector. As for this role as a policeman, he may have felt it his duty to take the law into his own hands and mete out justice. He obviously had worked out he was in the wrong universe. I think he did not thin much of your own force, law and customs, from what he said to us – to the sergeant! The victim had certainly harmed many people.” 

Just then it began to get light, as the first brightening and lightening of the sky began in the east. They ran downstairs, but the body remained a wolf. Just then, James and Jamie returned, covered in mud, dust, sweat and grass pollen and burrs.

“We’ve dug the grave for ye kin, Robbie,” Jamie said. James stood behind him, pale and exhausted, still covered in the blood of the other Robbie. He nodded to Lewis, who looked at him thoughtfully, before seemingly throwing off whatever thought he had had concerning his sergeant. He looked back down at the dead wolf, at Robbie Lewis,

“It’s time,” Lewis said.


	9. Chapter 9

It was gone eight o’clock that morning by the time the five of them piled into Lewis’ car, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe squashed in the back, Zoe taking the middle, slight and slender as she was. All were tired, Hathaway still covered in blood - sweat, mud, and dust on his stained shirt too now, after a night’s grave digging. All were quiet. Robbie had wanted something said, and he had looked to James, who had been horrified at first, and then, since no one objected nor mocked – apart from a slight mutter about papacy under Jamie’s breath, which had been silenced by a swat on his arm by the Doctor – he had read the rites for a man from another universe who had become a wolf and been killed, a man who nonetheless had been Robert Lewis.

As they approached Folly Bridge, Lewis sighed, “Ah, we’re all a mess aren’t we? But I’m going to have to log this somehow.”

He turned the car into the station car park. He left them in the car park after he’d parked, squaring his shoulders and reassuring Hathaway he would deal with Innocent. The Doctor scuttled after him,

“Inspector, let me...” he called.

The other three watched them go.

“I don’t think Inspector Lewis wants anyone to dig the wolf up,” Zoe said thoughtfully. “How will he protect the body if he tells the truth?”

“He said he’d say it was an escaped wolf,” Hathaway said numbly, as he lit his cigarette. “But there will be records. Unless he lets Innocent believe it was an illegal wild animal collection.”

“The Doctor will sort it,” Jamie said firmly. “Let’s all get ourselves a drink and something to eat. I don’t know about anyone else but I’m fair famished.”

“And hopefully the sergeant has a change of clothes here,” Zoe said.

Hathaway looked down at his blood stained shirt, which had been a clean pale pink the previous morning. He flicked his half smoked cigarette away and sighed. “Yes. I’m going to have a shower. Here,” he took his wallet from his pocket and gave it to Zoe, “I don’t know how much money from here you have. There’s a very nice French patisserie up the road, opposite Christchurch College. Could you get breakfast for five? They do a good English range too. I know the Inspector will want a bacon roll, and if you could get me a sausage sandwich. Tea for Lewis, coffee for me.”

“Fine. Come on Jamie, you can help. And tell me what you want. I know the Doctor will want a few sweet French patisserie cakes and coffee.”

“Aye, that he will. Sweet tooth, the Doctor. But never give him coffee Zoe, it fair messes with his mind, makes him more bouncy that ever! Best get him tea.”

“We’ll meet in the Inspector’s office,” Hathaway called after then, as they began to walk to the car park exit, before ducking his head and hurrying into the station, hoping he didn’t meet too many people; he didn’t want rampant gossip about his shirt covered in bright red arterial blood if it could be avoided. He wrapped his less stained jacket about him and braved the walk through to his locker and the shower rooms.

When all five were back at the station, sat on desks or chairs, squashed in the Lewis’ tiny office, the Doctor tried his best to explain to Lewis and Hathaway – and to Zoe and Jamie – all which had happened. Lewis seemed somewhat shell-shocked still, and had struggled to keep it together in front of the Chief, but the effort of managing it had left him exhausted and unable to hide his conflicted, confused, emotions anymore. He had, after all, met another version of himself and had watched the other him change into a wolf, seemingly attack his sergeant, and then be killed. It had been a hell of a night; that was for sure. He needed to know what the other Lewis was, where he had come from, why he had been here, and especially, why he had felt the need to kill that two-bit heavy after he had evicted and hurt his adopted neighbours in this universe. Back in the early eighties that house had been a lovely one, ideal location, good neighbourhood, way beyond the price range of a detective constable and his young heavily pregnant wife, staying at home to care for one little toddler already. Besides, there were other questions. The other wallet and warrant card burnt holes in his pocket. He pulled out the wallet again; he had put back the pictures from the wall by the makeshift camp bed. He ran his finger over the creased image of Val, identical in every way to his, before looking at the one of Hathaway, so obviously Hathaway, and yet not, for this one had allowed his hair to grow a bit, instead of shaved back to nothing, he had soft yellow curling short hair in a fifties style quiff. He was dressed in a baggy tee shirt, it was hard to see, but Lewis could imagine it probably had some band or festival slogan on it, if this James was like his.

His! What was he thinking?

The baby was maybe six months old, a little girl if the pink dress and white cardigan was to go by, but who knew, different universe, different rules? She had scant hair, but what there was seemed to be white blonde, a little pink ribbon tied in a tiny bow around one tuff. Where had she come from? Was she James’ child? His even? He couldn’t imagine James married. Well, to a woman! Who knew what was possible in the other Oxford? That the child was theirs, that they had adopted a baby, he was scared to think about it, because if he did, he would have to acknowledge how attractive the prospect was, not so much parenthood all over again, but James and him, him and James, James being his...

Hell!

“I still don’t get why he got here. How? I mean, did he fall down a rabbit hole or walk into a wardrobe? Is all that stuff real?” Lewis suddenly interrupted the Doctor’s babble about the entire multiverse, realities stacked upon each other, each varied to a greater or lesser degree, where a different choice had been made, by countries, religions, by leaders, and individuals. He had to interrupt his own thought process, interrupting the Doctor was just a side effect, but judging by Jamie’s face he had made a good call!

The Doctor spoke over both Zoe and Hathaway’s scoffing noises to Lewis’ question, “Who knows Inspector, perhaps these writers were visionaries, or even had experience, I’ve always wanted to meet the Rev Charles Dodgson again and ask him...”

“Aye, we didna stay long, did we? Wee Victoria didna like him much, but what has that strange professor got to do with these other places?”

“He wrote a book Jamie. Two. Well, many actually, but all the others were maths, and not many people read them -”

“I have!” interrupted Zoe with a proud smile.

The Doctor gave her an annoyed look and went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “He called himself Lewis Carroll when he wrote his story books.”

“Oh. I’ve read the Alice books, strange, nightmarish worlds, more like the land of fiction than what the Doctor is talking about,” Jamie said happily, finally grasping the conversation. “It’s like, somewhere, there is a universe where we won the Battle of Culloden, where the Bonny Prince was made King, where there is no Britain, only Scotland and England...”

“And from that there would have been no British Empire?” Hathaway mused, listening in.

“Or the strength to withstand Hitler?” added Zoe. “I know it’s hard Jamie, but historically I do think Britain is better united.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you experienced what I did Zoe!”

“But Jamie,” Zoe laughed, “that was hundreds of years ago to me, even here and now!”

Jamie scowled and bit into his ham and cheese roll.

“Can we get back to the subject please?” Lewis asked with a sigh, rubbing at his tired eyes before scratching the back of his neck. He felt he could sleep for a week.

“Of course Robbie,” the Doctor said gently, seeing how tired, confused and overwhelmed the man was. “Sergeant, why don’t you get your Inspector another cup of tea?”

Hathaway looked momentarily startled, but nodded and got up. “Anyone else?”

“I’ll never so no to a lovely cup of tea,” the Doctor said with a smile. Jamie and Zoe shook their heads. They were still scowling at one another.

“I don’t think we can be sure what dragged him through Robbie, but I would hazard a guess that he was pursuing a suspect. I have detected a breach in reality, for want of a better description. I’m really at a loss myself; I’ve not encountered the like before. I first thought it was a fissure in time, but was mistaken.”

“Might his smart phone/tablet thing tell us?” Lewis asked.

“Well, we can’t charge it, can we, we have no compatible connections here in this reality.”

“No. No, I suppose not. Only, I thought, your TARDIS...?”

“What do you know of my TARDIS Inspector?”

Lewis grinned, embarrassed, “Nothing, I just thought, you know, it travels in time and space...”

The Doctor looked hard at Lewis for a moment, Zoe and Jamie watched him look, curious at the sudden intense scrutiny. After a few moments the Doctor said, “Well Robbie, I do think this UNIT job is already far too much of my own personal future to try to forget. And yes, I might try something with the TARDIS. In the meantime, your police computer might tell me what I need to know – I’m looking for any other unusual activity, crimes, reports, and so on,” the Doctor waved his hands for emphasis, then clapped them together and looked at Lewis contemplatively. Jamie did not like the way the Doctor was looking so stood up from his perch on the end of Hathaway’s desk and walked across the short piece of floor to the Doctor, putting a firm hand on his shoulder.

Lewis ignored both the appreciative look and the possessive glare, instead turning his chair and hitting the keys to get his screen out of sleep mode, “Where Doctor?” he asked. “Park Town maybe?”

“No, the locale I traced centred on the Radcliffe Camera and Square, possibly slightly to the south east of it.”

“Got something, but it has a bloody D-notice sealing it. Can get you the names of the constables that found it, but they’ve probably been given OS forms already.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means UNIT stamped it out of the PNC and HOLMES 2 apart from one short notice.”

“And that is?”

“A burnt body. At the very end of Catte Street, just before the High.”

“So they were ahead of us all the while Inspector?”

“Looks like it, aye. Here’s James. Ta pet,” Lewis reached out to take the tea, then realised what he’d said as two bright pink spots emerged on his cheeks. “Sorry sergeant, pay no attention, I’m tired.”

Hathaway blushed slightly too, and looked down, ducking his head, hiding his face. “It’s fine Sir.”

Neither police officer noticed the look of triumph pass between Jamie and the Doctor.

Lewis didn’t acknowledge his sergeant, he didn’t trust himself. Instead, after taking a sip of his tea, he turned back to his computer,

“Remains discovered by PCs Blandings and Marr at 1647 on 9th May this year, following two separate reports of a college porter, a waiter at the Vaults, and a tour guide, to the effects that a man, quote, ‘appeared out of nowhere and burst into flames’. Two response vehicles sent to calm crowds and UNIT showed up at 1751 and took over. D-Notices issued, statement regarding a magical illusion/street art gone wrong put out on TVP facebook and twitter feeds at 1800, same notice issues to all local papers’ websites by 1830. And a order to report all similar cases to be directed to Tower of London; UNIT Europe control. All there is Doctor.”

“I suspected as much. Oh, hello again,” the Doctor looked up to see the Chief Superintendent at the doorway.

“Ma’am?” Lewis asked, looking up.

“You’re supposed to be gone Lewis, two days off in lieu of last night, remember?” she said as she walked into the already crowded small office space and nodded to the Doctor, “And as for the Doctor, I really think he should be gone. I have a UNIT operative on her way to interview me, and I really think you shouldn’t be here then, should you?”

“Ma’am, what will you say?”

“Don’t worry Lewis, it’s all under control.” She glanced over Lewis’ shoulder and nodded, as if not surprised, “As you can see, I have a good back story for a rogue wolf here.” She then turned to Hathaway, “Good work sergeant, I hear you tackled the wolf.”

“Ma’am?”

Fortunately Innocent didn’t see the Doctor behind her, putting his fingers to his lips and winking,

“It’s fine Ma’am. Thank you. All in the heat of the moment. Didn’t really think about it.”

“Good job. And you, Mr McCrimmon, thank you for saving my officer.”

“No problem. Ma’am,” Jamie added, confused, as this smart, older woman seemed to call for the title of respect. He had met many women in the future in command, and it was still a strange thing from his point of view, but he couldn’t argue with this one’s command and authority.

“Right Lewis, get everyone out of here. I don’t expect to see you or James back here for 48 hours. Clear?”

“Yes indeed,” Hathaway nodded, as Lewis just said tiredly, rubbing at his sore eyes again,

“Ma’am.”

 

*

They dropped the Doctor off at his TARDIS at his request, before going on to Lewis flat for more food and rest. The Doctor watched Lewis’ car negotiate the narrow cobbled street of Merton, before turning into Dead Man’s Walk and towards his TARDIS.

He didn’t stay long, merely managed to find the appropriate connection for Adjudicator Secular Lewis pocket padd, plug it in, and find a scanner that should detect any multi-dimensional as well as temporal fissures, plus the Rassilon’s Lock device attached to the TARDIS that its mostly ignored Instructions informed him were always installed to seal such breaches. If earlier Time Lords had been more vigilant, the Doctor mused as he scanned the book, then perhaps the likes of the Great Intelligence and the Animus would not have posed such a problem for him and his companions. Dear Barbara and Ian, he had not given them a thought in such a long time. If they were still alive, they would be elderly now. Were they still together? Did they marry? He always hoped they had.

Pockets brimming with devices, he left for the corner of the High and Catte Street. Just to make sure.

 

*

 

The Doctor arrived at Lewis’ flat in Marsden some three hours later. In the meantime, Lewis had had a shower, and a good sleep, Zoe had dozed on the sofa in front of the TV, Jamie had just watched TV while knocking back some rather nice bottles of ale and nibbling on biscuits, and Hathaway, twitchy with nervous energy and metaphysical and theological questions buzzing in his brain, had cleaned Lewis kitchen for him and prepared a lunch to reheat when the Doctor returned, making in roads in a rather fine bottle of Merlot Lewis had been keeping for a special occasion while he did so, as well as nipping out of a cigarette every half an hour or so. He meant the Doctor in the street, finishing yet another cigarette, as the Doctor walked up the road. He flicked it away and raised a hand slightly in greeting.

“Did you check it was closed?” Hathaway demanded, having guessed what the Doctor had wanted.

“If you mean the doorway to the Adjudicator’s dimension, then yes Sergeant, I have. I picked up a very slight residual energy signature from some crude time hopper device. My guess is the Adjudicator was chasing his perp down Catte Street in his own dimension, when he activated the hopper, which malfunctioned for some reason, spiralling him out sideways through time rather than backwards or forwards in time. But come on, show me into your Robbie’s flat and I can explain to everyone. I’ve managed to charge his phone, by the way, if you’re interested. Some very lovely pictures on there of the other you I would guess.”

Only the barest of twitches on his left eye gave away Hathaway’s deep discomfort at the thought.

Zoe made more tea for everyone, while James made some toast and put his ratatouille, garlic bread and salad in the fridge for later – the Doctor claimed to be hungry, but rejected the prepared meal – while Robbie, the Doctor, and Jamie squashed on the sofa desperate to look at the smart phone thing of the other Lewis. The Doctor, however, was reluctant to open it. The screen’s wallpaper, however, was a picture of James, in a grey morning suits, smiling a wide, happy, smile it was hard for Robbie to imagine his sergeant ever smiling. Both he, and James, who was suddenly peering over his shoulder, wanted desperately to know what the other James was to the other Robbie. Robbie was the one to ask, after a demanding look from his sergeant. 

The Doctor smiled sweetly, and said mischievously that he was sure they could figure that one out for themselves, that it really didn’t even just have to just apply to that universe. Then he just flipped his thumb up the screen and watched for the encryption options to appear.

“Password?” he asked, glancing at Robbie.

“How the hell do I know?”

The Doctor glared at him.

Lewis sighed and plucked the phone from the Doctor’s hand, and, with first try, unlocked the device. He began to scroll through options, looking at the personal and work folders. It was far more advanced than a smart phone, more like a tiny laptop, but the folders and files didn’t seem too far removed from Windows. That universe also had a bill Gates, obviously...

Meanwhile, Zoe was keeping everyone else occupied. She sat on the floor in front of the Doctor and let all that had been bothering her pour out while Lewis, unnoticed, devoured the files ion the phone. She had been musing for hours with no opportunity for explanations and question, ignored and alone at the flat, not that James or Jamie would have had the answers anyway. Everyone else had been occupied or asleep and the Doctor who knew where, so the problems and questions had grown in her mind, infuriating and frustrating her. She had bigger problems with the myths of werewolves, how the Adjudicator Lewis did not fit with all the mythology, it wasn’t quite a full moon, and didn’t take silver to kill him, that it had sounded as if he was a hurting, afraid, mentally ill, human, alone in a strange world, not a monster at all.

“Exactly what he was, Zoe, exactly what he was,” the Doctor said at the end of her long, confusing, tirade of questions, beaming at her like a proud teacher that his long struggling pupil had finally understood and cracked the problem.

Lewis suddenly interrupted Jamie, who had been about to tease Zoe for her over-thinking things again, as he wondered aloud how he would have coped in their universe. Would they have smelt he was different?

The Doctor turned to look at Lewis, remembering he had the pocket padd and access, and folded his hand over it, his fingers brushing Lewis’ strong, calloused ones. He momentarily wondered again about his future, this man’s past, as Lewis looked up from the phone and into his eyes, bright dark blue eyes twinkling. 

“I mean, well, it seems they would have had such a strong, developed, sense of smell, being part wolf. He uses smell as an accredited form of evidence in some notes,” Lewis explained, his own fingers of his left hand gently removing the Doctor’s hand, his right hand tightening on the phone.

“I’m not sure how much I can help Inspector,” the Doctor replied, reaching for the phone, but spotting Jamie’s jealous scowl at the finger play and hand caressing and changing his mind. The inspector had a right to it, he supposed. Any advanced technology from the other universe was unlikely to be used here, providing he could take it with him to the TARDIS when they left. 

I’m not sure if they were all Wolfbloods in that dimension, or just some people, but obviously they were fully integrated into that society and not on its margins, if, as you say, their heightened senses were admissible in court.”

“What about him? The other Lewis? Could he have settled here? I doubt it, |I really do.” James said, coming and sitting on the arm of the sofa next to his inspector.

“Well, “ replied the Doctor gently,” although, if we could have calmed him before Jamie’s timely intervention, if the good Inspector had allowed him, I would have risked a good deal to try to move the TARDIS sideways and take him home, but sadly my own people would not allow that, travelling through the multiverse is strictly prohibited.”

Zoe scoffed, “When has that ever stopped us before...?”

Jamie, meanwhile was intrigued by his lover’s mention of his own people, it was only the second time he had known the Doctor do so, acknowledge he had a people, a place, a planet, and hadn’t sprung, fully formed, with his TARDIS, alone in the universe, to fight evil and free oppressed people!

“Zoe, there are things you don’t understand, some things I can’t do,” the Doctor said gently, as Lewis said,

“Aye, well, it’s a mute point. He’s dead and buried now. And probably better for him.”

“How will you protect his grave, his body?” Zoe asked.

“Yes, I want to know that. How do you know Innocent won’t just give UNIT his location?” Hathaway added.

“Because she won’t. For starters, she doesn’t know where the incident happened, the Doctor and I were... creative with the address.”

“And we said we had burned the body,” the Doctor added.

Lewis went on to explain that Innocent had agreed to tell UNIT that it turned out to be a genuine wolf escaped from a private owner in the Cotswolds and it had made it’s home with a homeless man squatting in the row of houses that were occupied by squatter who unlawfully evicted by the new owners. Once the wolf had killed one man, it had then turned on the one looking after it. She knew they will look into it, but hopefully the body would be left in peace.

“Of course, they won’t believe her in her debrief, so she will then say that the wolf belonged to the man who came through the portal they had already detected and tried to shut down, the charred remains of the alien they took away,” the Doctor added.

“Aye. We didn’t have those facts until after the meeting, but it was obvious she knew about the body at Catte Street in May,” Lewis finished.

“You told her everything?” Hathaway asked, surprised.

“Almost everything lad,” Lewis said with a smile, “some things are best not shared, in case they suddenly happen in this universe.”

At that, considering the picture of the other James in the wolf-Lewis’ wallet and on his phone, he looked down shyly, going pink at the tips of his ears and flushing across his cheeks. Robbie had never seen his sergeant blush before. He found he loved it. But he gave it no more thought as he listened to the Doctor, who explained again, this time to everyone, that he had found the echoes of the rip, that it was activated by some alien technology not known on Earth, and unlikely to be known in the other Earth. He suspected Adjudicator Lewis’ suspect was an alien who had tried to shift with an unstable matter interface and fried himself in the process, taking poor Lewis with him. He then managed to snatch the phone from Lewis’ tight grip, and closed down the Adjudicator’s logs and pulled up, instead, personal files, pictures and memories. He held it up to everyone, except poor Zoe, who was seated on the floor in front of him, and showed the photos he had found, of Lewis and Hathaway in matching grey morning suits and top hats, showered in pink confetti, of Robbie and James’ wedding, and then, after a while of a baby girl, including an inexplicable one of a tired James in a hospital bed with a newborn baby. 

James slipped away, sliding of the arm of the chair, as they looked at the wedding photos, unnoticed as Zoe made a fuss at not being able to see, showing the Doctor and Jamie one of her rare moments when she acted her age, that of a young teenager, and not the series girl from the Wheel, promoted and pushed beyond her age. She parked herself on Jamie’s lap and made happy squealing noises at the photos, smiling as Robbie said, amazed,

“That’s our Lyn,” at one large family grouping. To the first baby snaps, he added, “I thought mebbe she was a grandchild, but it looks like that James and Robbie adopted.”

When they got to the newborn baby the Doctor tried to explain to the baffled faces about some lupine descended creatures and some lycanthropic ones and males with uteruses, but at that point everyone realised James has already walked out. Lewis got up to go, but the Doctor grabbed his sleeve and shook his head. Instead, with a look from the Doctor, Jamie went. He found James sitting on a low wall at the back of the block of flats, smoking another cigarette, and starring morosely into space. Jamie went and sat beside him.

“Foul and expensive thing of the English, in my day,” he said.

“What?”

“Tobacco.”

“Oh? I suppose it was.” He carried on starring into space. James had not seen his other self with the newborn; he had left after the wedding photos. Jamie had obviously followed him as he sensed his discomfort. He listened, interested and with more than sympathetic understanding as the strange boy from the past talked about his time and pastors and sins and how he didn’t think there was such superstitious nonsense now, in this time. How he was confused to hear that James was a papist, that there was still a Church of Rome in the British Isles, he thought the English had less love if it that the Scots.

“I thought your Bonny Prince was supportive Catholic? In fact, I understood you Jacobites to be Catholic rebels.” James sneered.

“Aye, many of us were,” Jamie sighed. “I don’t hold with superstitious nonsense anymore.” He looked down, and then went on to defend his former leader, changing the subject. “He was our prince, he would have got rid of all the English landlords and soldiers, given us back our crofts and lands,” Jamie replied tartly. “Ancient history to you. To me, my first taste of battle, of blood, or suffering, of monsters, ’cept it was you posh English who were the monsters.”

James looked up, he had hung his head for sometime, staring at the bare, cracked concrete, as he smoked. “I can only apologize for my ancestors,” he said, and seemed like he meant it. Jamie softened, remembered he had come to help the skinny, tall, awkward man, not blame him for things he had nothing to do with,

“Sorry. I lost good people then. But my life would have been fair different if I’d not met the Doctor, that’s for certain, so I don’t regret that.” He then explained how he thought he would have got married but had no idea of love and passion until the Doctor, that Zoe had explained he was made to love men, some men were, and some women made to love women. Sin was hurting people, he was an old-fashioned man, though, and if you loved someone you made a commitment, but the Doctor was as slippery as an eel! But the Bible said sex outside marriage was the sin, right, not love?

James looked at Jamie sadly, “It’s much more complicated than that,” he said.

“Only if you want it to be, only if it make it so,” Jamie said. “Come back in. We found photos of the other you and Robbie’s daughter. A fair, bonny lass they have.”

“Oh?” James wasn’t sure what to think. He had seen the photo, of course, on the wall in the house. The other him, with what he disdainfully thought as gay hair and a baby. But he thought more deeply as he followed Jamie up the stairs, trying to make himself not peek as the lad’s kilt swung about those strong legs, trying not to look up as he went around the landing above him. He thought that the other James was a widower now, with a small baby to raise, alone in that world, if, like him, he was estranged from his own family and Robbie’s children were far away too.

They came back in quietly. The Doctor and Zoe were waiting to leave by the door to the living room as they came in. The phone had been put away conveniently into one of the Doctor’s pockets – the case notes and file details and access to all agencies on the other Earth was not something that belonged in the Thames Valley Police or UNIT’s hands. Promises had obviously been made to explain more on omegas to Zoe in the TARDIS. They all looked kindly at James, who immediately sat awkwardly down on his place next to Lewis on the sofa, squashed to the left of his boss. The Doctor pointed to the kitchenette, where the TARDIS crew adjourn to make more tea, leaving James and Robbie to talk. 

The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe attempted to leave after putting the tea tray down on the coffee table in front of the two men, who were looking at each other intensely, holding hands. They barely acknowledged them, but then Robbie seemed to grasp what was going on and offered to drive them back to the TARDIS. 

They climbed out of the car in Oriel drive.

“Goodbye,” the Doctor said, shaking both men’s hands vigorously “And good luck to you both.”

Zoe grinned soppily, “Oh yes, good luck and congratulations.” Hathaway scowled deeply at her, but Lewis winked. Jamie shook both men’s hands too, then quickly gave James a hug,

“Be happy, not guilty,” he whispered. James nodded slightly, which Jamie took to be a yes. He walked away, calling to the Doctor, who scuttled after him. Zoe turned back and gave both men a huge hug each.

“You’re both so lovely,” she said. She ran to catch up with her travelling companions.

James and Robbie stood watching them walk down Merton Street towards Dead Man’s Walk. The Doctor talking, quite pleased that the Brigadier’s idea had taken off and lasted through the decades, Jamie pleased that Robbie and James seemed to final got together, Zoe annoyed that she missed most of the action

“But you enjoyed your museum trips and your day off, didn’t you Zoe?” the Doctor asked as they entered the TARDIS. The door closed and the TARDIS faded away to a strange wheezing and groaning noise, watched only by a robin sitting on a nearby branch...

*

The two detectives looked at each other one the strange group of time travellers were no longer in sight. “Alright, bonny lad?” Lewis asked his no longer not quite sergeant. He bumped shoulders with him, as he had on countless times, but this time, he caught hold of Hathaway’s hand and entwined their fingers together, palm pressed to palm. Hathaway gripped back tightly.

“Yes Sir. Very alright indeed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay in completing this fic. My own health continues to grow more frail as I struggle to care for my daughter. I seem to be in a nightmare where the more I try to recruit a carer, the more people are taking the piss with not turning up to interviews or even, the first day of their employment! I tried an on-line site and my ad got trolled!!!! Wish I had enough money for an agency! Who knew how six hours home care made all the difference in the world to being able to have time and 'spoons'* to one's self and write etc?
> 
> Sorry again :( But I do hope you have enjoyed my little Lewis/Doctor Who crossover :)
> 
> *spoons: http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/wpress/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/comment-page-33/

**Author's Note:**

> For the Lewis fan who has been following my AU case fics/Lewis and Hathaway relationship series: I have been very very ill and I'm so sorry to keep you waiting. I'm going to try to ease myself back into writing before completing such a detailed and complex work of Poisoned Minds. Sorry for the very long wait. So sorry :(


End file.
